Art, Politics and Memory: a Conversation with Colm Tóibín

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Claudia Luppino

2013-03-01

Full Text Available The participation to a literary festival in Florence gave the interviewer the occasion to meet one of the most prolific and best loved Irish writers of our days. In what immediately took the shape and flavour of an informal and multifarious conversation – more than a strictly academic interview – Colm Tóibín, thus, shed an insightful light on his aesthetic beliefs and practice, but also on his political views, interest in current affairs and the impact of autobiography on his fiction. His relationship with John McGahern, one of the greatest twentieth-century Irish novelists, was also thoroughly addressed.

Can Organizations Learn without Political Leadership? The Case of Public Sector Reform among South African Home Affairs Officials

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Segatti, Aurelia; Hoag, Colin Brewster; Vigneswaran, Darshan

2012-01-01

This paper deals with the transformation of “institutional culture” in bureaucratic agencies. This is explored in the context of post-Apartheid South African public sector reform, and more particularly that of migration management within the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). The paper assesses...... the effects on staff’s perceptions and practices of a politically driven attempt at inculcating a new sense of “service delivery”. Structural factors are not found to have been prevalent determinants explaining the difficulties in implementing the reform. It is rather the failure of the political leadership...

Fiction as a Medium of Social Communication in 19th Century France

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sabina Pstrocki-Sehovic

2014-10-01

Full Text Available This article will present the extent to which literature could be viewed as means of social communication – i.e. informing and influencing society – in 19thcentury France, by analysing the appearance of three authors at different points:  the beginning, the middle and the end of the century. The first is the case of Balzac at the beginning of the 19th Century who becomes the most successful novelist of the century in France and who, in his prolific expression and rich vocabulary, portrays society from various angles in a huge opus of almost 100 works, 93 of them making his Comédie humaine. The second is the case of Gustave Flaubert whose famous novel Madame Bovary, which depicts a female character in a realist but also in a psychologically conscious manner, around the mid-19th century reaches French courts together with Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire and is exposed as being socially judged for its alleged immorality. The last is the political affair of Dreyfus and its defender Emile Zola, the father of naturalism. This case confirms the establishment of more intense relations between writer and politics and builds a solid way for a more conscious and everyday political engagement in the literary world from the end of the 19th century onwards. These three are the most important cases which illustrate how fiction functioned in relation to society, state and readership in 19th century France.

JPRS Report:. Soviet Union, Political Affairs

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

1990-01-01

...; REPUBLIC PARTY AND STATE AFFAIRS - Baltic Unity Efforts Assessed, Baltic Military District Loyal to USSR Law, Latvia Paramilitary Leader on Group's Role, Formation of Latvian Defense Units, Latvian...

Science diplomacy: Investigating the perspective of scholars on politics-science collaboration in international affairs.

Science.gov (United States)

Fähnrich, Birte

2017-08-01

Science diplomacy is a widely practiced area of international affairs, but academic research is rather sparse. The role of academia within this field of politics-science interaction has hardly been considered. This article analyzes this scholarly perspective: Based on a literature review, a case study of a German science diplomacy program is used to explore objectives, benefits, and constraints of science diplomacy for participating scholars. While political approaches suggest an ideal world where both sides profit from the collaboration, the findings of the case study point to another conclusion which shows that the interaction of scholars and officials in science diplomacy is far more complex. Thus, the contribution is regarded as both a useful starting point for further research and for a critical reflection of academics and politicians in science diplomacy practice to gauge what can be expected from the collaboration and what cannot.

Fictionalized History: Signifying Changes to the Malaysian Nation and Identity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sim Chee Cheang

2016-04-01

Full Text Available As one of the cornerstones of fiction, writers often use and confront history in their claim to “reality” and “identity” in their writing. Linda Hutcheon’s claim for “a postmodern concern for the multiplicity and dispersion of truth(s; truth(s relative to the specificity of place and culture” (1988, p. 108 is relevant to the use of history in recent Malaysian literature. The multiple and varied claims of truth(s as reflected through the fictionalizing of Malaysian history is the focus of the analysis in this article, which aims to expose the social, economic, and political implications of the Malaysian identity. The analysis of three current works of fictionalized Malaysian history from the different fictional genres of comic series, children’s history, and occidental history, represents a cross section of genres that challenge the supremacy of history’s ontological claim over identity. The deliberate contestation of received Malaysian history in fictional modes acknowledges the peripheral identity structures of race, religion, and economics that are sensitive in a multiracial country such as Malaysia.

JPRS Report. Soviet Union: Political Affairs.

Science.gov (United States)

1990-09-13

cultivating the idea of forming a circle of domestic correspondents who would be fully immersed in studying parliamentary affairs, acquiring the neces...is to deal with ecological problems, and especially hydrobiologists in the field of ecotoxicology , to use as their tools the basic principles of

Representation of Refugees, Asylum-Seekers and Refugee Affairs In Hungarian Dailies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lilla VICSEK

2008-11-01

Full Text Available How does the press in Hungary write about refugees, asylum-seekers and refugee affairs? We sought to answer this question. Articles appearing in 2005 and 2006 in two leading national Hungarian dailies were examined with quantitative content analysis. The results show that the articles analyzed often treat refugee affairs as an “official” political matter. The high proportion of legislation and political positions conveys the image that refugee affairs are a state or intergovernmental matter, an “official”, legal, political issue rather than for example a humanitarian question. Most of the articles published in both papers write about problems and conflicts in connection with refugee affairs. The negative media image has different significance for different topics. We argue that the question of refugee affairs is a topic where the image shown by the media is of great relevance: the media can be a more important source of information on this subject than personal contacts.

JPRS Report, Soviet Union, Political Affairs

Science.gov (United States)

1989-07-27

skillfully shift animal husbandry to the summer work regime, and to ensure the sheep are sheared. JPRS-UPA-89-046 27 JULY 1989 16 PARTY, STATE AFFAIRS... vineyards . Vegetable plantations must replant on an urgent basis, and also prepare right now for receiving, processing and storing fruit and

Celebrities in International Affairs

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Richey, Lisa Ann; Budabin, Alexandra Cosima

2016-01-01

Celebrity engagement in global “helping” is not a simple matter of highly photogenic caring for needy others across borders; it is a complex relationship of power that often produces contradictory functions in relation to the goals of humanitarianism, development, and advocacy. This article argues...... that celebrities are acting as other elite actors in international affairs: investing considerable capital into processes that are highly political. It traces the emergence and practices of the elite politics of celebrities in North-South relations, an evolution made possible by recent changes in aid practices......, media, and NGOs, then considers exemplary cases of Angelina Jolie in Burma, Ben Affleck in the Democractic Republic of Congo, and Madonna in Malawi. These celebrity practices as diplomats, experts, and humanitarians in international affairs illustrate the diverse and contradictory forms of engagement...

Desperate Housewives – fiction de toutes les fictions

OpenAIRE

Cros, Renan

2016-01-01

Fiction de toutes les fictions, Desperate Housewives, entre ironie et empathie, accumule et désarticule les codes du soap opera pour mettre sur l’écran l’imaginaire d’une nation. À partir d’un récit balisé, la série fait de la répétition un mode de lecture. Répétition des situations mais aussi répétition de fictions préexistantes, Desperate Housewives fait du feuilleton l’art de la répétition en célébrant la culture populaire américaine. Fiction of all fictions, Desperate Housewives, betwe...

The Organizational Realities of Student Affairs: A Political Perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Shinn, Jeremiah B.

2015-01-01

The purpose of this study was to understand the organizational functions of student-affairs at Indiana University and to understand the nature of the conflict between student-affairs and the larger organization. This study utilized the case-study research design. Much of the data collected and analyzed during this case study were of a historical…

Comfortable Fictions and the Struggle for Turf: An Essay Review of "The Invented Indian: Cultural Fictions and Government Policies," Edited by James A. Clifton.

Science.gov (United States)

Deloria, Vine, Jr.

1992-01-01

Clifton's collection of essays attacks recent pro-Indian "fictions" (including Native spirituality and the relationship between the Iroquois League and the U.S. Constitution) as politically motivated romanticism and nonsense. The authors are struggling to maintain white intellectual authority over definitions of Indian identity and interpretations…

Network Fictions and the Global Unhomely

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aris Mousoutzanis

2016-04-01

Full Text Available The paper suggests that the increasing proliferation of network fictions in literature, film, television and the internet may be interpreted through a theoretical framework that reconceptuallises the originally strictly psychoanalytic concept of the 'Unheimlich' (Freud’s idea of the ‘unhomely’ or ‘uncanny’ within the context of political, economic and cultural disources fo globalisation. ‘Network fictions’ are those texts consisting of multiple interlocking narratives set in various times and places that explore the interconnections of characters and events across different storylines: novels such as William Gibson’s 'Pattern Recognition' (2003, Hari Kunzro’s 'Transmission' (2005 and 'Gods Without Men' (2011, David Mitchell’s 'Cloud Atlas' (2004, or Rana Dasgupta’s 'Tokyo Cancelled' (2005 are some examples. My argument is that central to these fictions is a sense of a ‘global unhomely’. The sense of displacement, unhomeliness and global mobility that is conveyed in these fictions is fundamental to the experience of the 'Unheimlich'. In addition, the ability of the concept to convey a combined sense of the familiar and the strange is useful in exploring the ways in which these fictions engage with theoretical debates on globalisation that perceive the interaction between global flows and local cultures either in terms of homogenisation and uniformity or of heterogenisation and hybridity. Moreover, the repetitive temporality of the 'Unheimlich' is another distinctive aspect that allows a reading of the disjunctive, non-linear temporal structure of these fictions from this perspective. The ‘repetition compulsion’, however, that Freud considered to be an example of uncanniness was also theorised by him as a post-traumatic symptom, and this implicit association of uncanniness with post-traumatic experience also allows to interpret the persistent preoccupation of these fictions with suffering and disaster, as well as

American socio-politics in fictional context: transformers and the representation of the United States

OpenAIRE

Underwood, David William.

2013-01-01

The fictional narratives that have been developed for the support of the Transformers brand, with their underlying emphasis on the sale of action figures, have been dismissed as a somewhat juvenile and uninteresting text. Little to no serious academic analysis of any of the various iterations of the franchise has been undertaken. With this thesis, I endeavour to begin that analysis and thus broaden and problematize the currently limited understanding of Transformers fictions. Due to the fr...

Fictionalization, conscientization and the trope of exile in Amandla and Third Generation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J. Geertsema

1993-05-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this article is to examine Amandla (by Miriam TIali and Third Generation (by Sipho Sepamla as anti-apartheid novels of resistance which are faced by a number of serious contradictions. The article is an attempt to analyse the ways in which these texts seek to cope, on the one hand, with what seems to be a lost cause, a struggle without an end, and on the other hand with their own status as fictional texts which attempt to change precisely that which seems to deny all possibilities of subversion. Both texts attempt to make sense of a reality which is perceived to be so horrifyingly real as to be fictional (in the sense of the fictive, unreal, ethereal. On the one hand the power of the apartheid state is seen to be insurmountable, and on the other hand, that stale has to be subverted and destroyed. The resulting dialectic, posited in the texts, of the state of affairs in reality and the state of affairs that is desired, can only be solved by the use of the trope of exile as an imaginary resolution to a very real contradiction in order to achieve at least some measure of conscientization in the readership.

Fictional Names, Fictional Characters and Persons Referred to in Narrative Fiction

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Koťátko, Petr

2017-01-01

Roč. 24, č. 3 (2017), s. 308-338 ISSN 1335-0668 Institutional support: RVO:67985955 Keywords : fictional name * literary character * fictional world * pretense Subject RIV: AA - Philosophy ; Religion OBOR OECD: Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology

Framing Mass Shootings: Fictional Depictions of Real-life Gun Massacres in American Cinema

OpenAIRE

Tryggeseid, Ane Johannessen

2017-01-01

This thesis examines the concept of real-life mass shootings and its depiction in American fictional cinema. The issue of mass shootings is a highly controversial subject of discussion, both within the public and political sphere, as it necessarily touches upon rigid perceptions of civil liberties – specifically those of the Second Amendment – which further permeates the field of fictional cinema. As opposed to assessing the issue of mass shootings as a product of a prevailing culture of guns...

East Europe Report, Political, Sociological and Military Affairs

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

1984-01-01

Partial Contents: International Affairs, Radio, Birthday Celebration, School Anniversary, Cultural Agreement, Presidents, Trade Union Bureau, Education, Olympic Committee, Ambassador, Conference, Exhibition, Campaign...

Political Correctness—Between Fiction and Social Reality

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Valeri Lichev

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Nowadays political correctness (PC is blamed by its opponents because of a failed model of multiculturalism, an influx of migrants and the threat of terrorist acts. Obviously, a definition of tolerance given by UNESCO in 1995 has lost its meaning. In order to argue a possibility of a global ethos based on new understandings of PC, the authors refer to contemporary achievements of semiotics, hermeneutics and philosophical anthropology. We use a critical method developed in the hermeneutical tradition of P. Ricoeur, J. Kristeva, Tz. Todorov and others. Criticism is directed at (1 paradoxes of postmodern philosophical attempts for justification the idea of political correctness; (2 the way of introducing new terminology, as on a language level it leads, not to inclusion, but to exclusion, of disadvantaged people because as E. Benveniste states, the third person is rather the non-person. The conclusion is that politically correct speech should be grounded on a basis which takes into account the three persons of verb conjugation. Similar philosophical and ethical ideas can be found in works of J. Kristeva, Tz. Todorov, P. Ricoeur. An example is given for how these ideas can be implemented in the fields of film and art. This is one of the possible ways of overcoming the exclusion of disadvantaged people who are only named in politically correct terms, and not as participants, in social and political dialogue.

Food irradiation: Facts or fiction?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Loaharanu, P.

1990-01-01

Food irradiation is at a political crossroad. In one direction, it is moving forward supported by overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and benefits to economy and health. In the opposite direction, it threatens to be derailed by misleading claims about its safety and usefulness. Whether people will ultimately benefit from the use of irradiation to help fight serious food problems, or whether they will allow the technology to go to waste, will be determined by how successful people are in separating the facts from the fiction of food irradiation

Ethical Design Fiction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Thessa; Vistisen, Peter

2017-01-01

In this paper we examine how ethical challenges can be approached in and through design fiction. To do so, we develop a new framework for analysis as well as creation of design fictions. Our main focus will be on design fiction within a strategical setting, connecting the notion of design fiction...

Gore vidal's early Hollywood: history, fiction and film Gore vidal's early Hollywood: history, fiction and film

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Thomas LaBorie Burns

2008-04-01

Full Text Available Although Gore Vidal has both worked as a Hollywood screenwriter and written criticism on Film—in this regard, he is perhaps best known for a sustained attack on the auteur theory of the magisterial director—I am concerned in this paper mainly with his fiction account of the early days of film-making in his novel Hollywood (1990 and the relation of film to national political life depicted therein. This novel is the sixth in a series that gives a more or less continuous historical picture of the social and political history of the US from colonial times to the present. “Political” for Vidal, however, means primarily the acts of statesmen, diplomats, and high-ranking military personnel, and the social history he presents is that of the upper-class which supplies their ranks, so that what Vidal is in fact offering in these six novels is what one might call the history of the American “movers-and-shakers”. Although Gore Vidal has both worked as a Hollywood screenwriter and written criticism on Film—in this regard, he is perhaps best known for a sustained attack on the auteur theory of the magisterial director—I am concerned in this paper mainly with his fiction account of the early days of film-making in his novel Hollywood (1990 and the relation of film to national political life depicted therein. This novel is the sixth in a series that gives a more or less continuous historical picture of the social and political history of the US from colonial times to the present. “Political” for Vidal, however, means primarily the acts of statesmen, diplomats, and high-ranking military personnel, and the social history he presents is that of the upper-class which supplies their ranks, so that what Vidal is in fact offering in these six novels is what one might call the history of the American “movers-and-shakers”.

Claiming lesbian history: the romance between fact and fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Garber, Linda

2015-01-01

The contested field of lesbian history exists along a continuum, with undisputed evidence on one end and informed speculation on the other. Lesbian historical fiction extends the spectrum, envisioning the lives of lesbian pirates, war heroes, pioneers, bandits, and stock romantic characters, as well as the handful of protagonists examined here whose quests specifically highlight the difficulty and importance of researching the lesbian past. The genre blossomed in the 1980s, just as the Foucauldian insistence that homosexual identity did not exist before the late nineteenth century gained sway in the academy. The proliferation of lesbian historical fictions signals the growing desire for more thorough (if not completely factual) historical underpinnings of the burgeoning lesbian identities, communities, and politics set in motion in the 1970s.

JPRS Report, Soviet Union, Political Affairs

Science.gov (United States)

1989-09-27

the popular "On-Duty Reporter" column , Yeliza- veta Bogoslovskaya, Sergey Chesnokov, and Galina Sapunova, literally have not gotten off the telephone...Affairs E . A. Didorenko. He has demonstrated the kind of admirable energy that he has failed to show in the fight against crime. Back on 23 February...Our editorial welcomed E . A. Didorenko’s and TASH- KENTSKAYA PRAVDA’s desire to shed light on many problems of interethnic relations and the

Science Fiction on Film.

Science.gov (United States)

Burmester, David

1985-01-01

Reviews science fiction films used in a science fiction class. Discusses feature films, short science fiction films, short story adaptations, original science fiction pieces and factual science films that enrich literature. (EL)

Daughters of the Fifth Sun: A Collection of Latina Fiction and Poetry.

Science.gov (United States)

Milligan, Bryce, Ed.; And Others

This anthology of contemporary fiction and poetry by Hispanic American women writers contains material ranging from national award winners to emerging talents. Noting that until recently 20th-century academic literary criticism described ethnic American literature as parochial and politically driven, the anthology's introduction discusses how the…

USSR Report, Political and Sociological Affairs

Science.gov (United States)

1984-06-22

resolutions on Namibia. However, the world has not failed to note that France and Britain have demonstrated some realism on that problem and have...Kagoshima, in a few days’ time. Seven ships of Japan’s navy and of the US 7th Fleet, two British patrol ships and a French destroyer will take...affairs in the Far East and in the history of war art. That event is well remembered in our country. Our poeple associate it with the stupid avarice of

The World of Science Fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Schwartz, Sheila

1971-01-01

Science fiction is discussed from the following standpoints: What Is Science Fiction?; The History of Science Fiction; and The Themes of Science Fiction. A list of films, books, and records about science fiction is given. (DB)

The Role of Narrative Fiction and Semi-Fiction in Organizational Studies

NARCIS (Netherlands)

G.M. Whiteman (Gail); N. Phillips (Nelson)

2006-01-01

textabstractIn this chapter, we discuss the use of narrative fiction and semi-fiction in organizational research and explore the strengths and weaknesses of these alternative approaches. We begin with an introduction reviewing the existing literature and clarifying what we mean by fiction and

East Europe Report, Political, Sociological and Military Affairs

Science.gov (United States)

1984-09-20

successfully abroad, revealed television to be the most significant factor in the political socialization of the children. Is it legitimate for a...about political socialization facing every society; to find out what the role of the most phenomena in the political world. (This has significance...societal level is felt more strongly in the political socialization process as the children grow older. This is further reinforced by data we

Student Affairs in Complex Contexts

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Dissatisfaction and frustration with political leaders have sent students ... In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Minister of Higher Education has ordered a ... Student Affairs will need to anticipate and find innovative ways to adjust ... Razia Mayet's article focuses on the effectiveness of learning development interventions.

Should psychiatrists write fiction?

Science.gov (United States)

Bladon, Henry

2018-04-01

This paper looks at the relationship between fiction and psychiatry. Specifically, the idea of psychiatrists as fiction writers is explored, and reference is made to various fictional texts to illustrate the problems of stigma and negative imagery. These two main areas of focus are highlighted as ones that the practice of writing fiction might address, and some potential pitfalls are discussed. The paper suggests how psychiatrists might ameliorate the present problems by incorporating their unique clinical skills and knowledge into fictional narratives. Declaration of interest None.

Colonizing Bodies: Corporate Power and Biotechnology in Young Adult Science Fiction

Science.gov (United States)

Guerra, Stephanie

2009-01-01

The American cultural and political landscape has seen changes on the level of seismic shifts in the past four decades, thanks in part to the two very diverse fields of big business and biotechnology. Linking the two arenas together in the literary landscape is a growing body of young adult science fiction that envisions a future shaped profoundly…

History in Fiction:The Case of “Rip Van Winkle”%History in Fiction: The Case of “Rip Van Winkle”

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

Liu Jun

2009-01-01

Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" has been so ritualistically cited and discussed by historians,political scientists and literary scholars that it is no longer just a simple tale but a prominent text in American culture.The tale,as one critic proclaims,"presides over the birth of the American imagination" (Fiedler xx).This essay revisits "Rip Van Winkle" for the sole purpose of considering how this literary text can also stimulate critical thinking on the connection between fiction (or poetry) and history.

Mimesis, fiction, paradoxes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Françoise Lavocat

2010-04-01

Full Text Available Les théories contemporaines de la fiction, comme les poétiques de la Renaissance, privilégient une conception de la mimesis fondée sur la vraisemblance : la démonstration du profit cognitif et moral de la fiction passe toujours par une définition de l’imitation (de quelque façon qu’on la définisse fondée sur la rationalité. L’auteur de cet article examine tout d’abord le statut des contradictions et de l’impossible chez quelques théoriciens actuels (principalement J.-M. Schaeffer, M.-L. Ryan, L. Doležel et poéticiens du 16e siècle (L. Castelvetro et F. Patrizi. Sont ensuite étudiées la forme et la fonction que prend l’impossible dans trois fictions narratives de la Renaissance. L’hypothèse majeure qui est défendue est que ces paradoxes permettent de penser le non-existant, dans la continuité de la scolastique médiévale et en relation avec une problématique religieuse, sérieuse ou parodique. Par là même, et en raison de leur auto-référentialité constitutive, les paradoxes inscrivent dans la fiction une réflexion sur elle-même qui n’a rien d’une apologie. La pensée de la fiction s’articule en définitive de façon bien différente dans les théories et dans les fictions elles-mêmes.Like Renaissance poetics, contemporary theories of fiction do favour a conception of mimesis based on likelihood. In order to underscore the benefits of fiction, in terms of cognition or ethics, both ancient and present-day authors usually identify imitation (however this is understood as a kind of rationality. The aim of this article is to question the status of contradictions and impossibilities, first in current theories of fiction (J-M Schaeffer, M.-L. Ryan, L. Doležel, then in two sixteenth century comments of Aristotle (by L. Castelvetro and F. Patrizi. In the following steps, forms and functions of the impossible are studied in three narratives of the Renaissance. The main hypothesis here is the following: in

Radical Homemaking in Contemporary American Environmental Fiction

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kristin J. Jacobson

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Ursula K. Heise in ‘Ecocriticism and the Transnational Turn in American Studies’ critiques ‘the portrayal of multicultural and sometimes transnational nuclear families as the narrative solution to environmental and political problems’ (Heise, 2008: 383. This essay places Heise’s critique of the ‘ecological family romance’ in conversation with three other ecological domestic fictions: T. C. Boyle’s 'A Friend of the Earth' (2000, Jonathan Franzen’s 'Freedom' (2010, and Barbara Kingsolver’s 'Flight Behavior' (2012. Heise’s critique and Shannon Hayes’ 'Radical Homemakers' (2010 frame my close readings of the novels’ interconnected themes of radical homemaking, transnationalism, and environmentalism. My reading of the novels highlights their shared use of marginalized, racially-other characters to develop their entwined romantic and environmental plots (Lalitha in 'Freedom', several minor characters in 'A Friend of the Earth', and Ovid in 'Flight Behavior' and their use of sentimental deaths, especially of key female characters (Lalitha in Freedom, Sierra in A Friend of the Earth, and Dellarobia’s uncertain fate in Flight Behavior. By adopting the sentimental, domestic romance plot for ecological aims, the three novels highlight how environmental aims get stymied when cultural and ecological diversity are relegated to the margins. They also suggest that more is gained than lost through their use of ecological allegory. While the fictions do not offer solutions, they do push their readers to confront the Anthropocene’s ecological realities and their radical domestic-environmental politics.

POSTCOLONIAL ARABIC FICTION REVISITED: NATURALISM AND EXISTENTIALISM IN GHASSAN KANAFANI’S MEN IN THE SUN

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shadi Saleh Neimneh

2017-09-01

Full Text Available This article looks into the postcolonial Arabic narrative of Ghassan Kanafani to examine its underplayed existential and naturalistic aspects. Postcolonial texts (and their exegeses deal with the effects of colonization/imperialism. They are expected to be political and are judged accordingly. Drawing on Kanafani’s Men in the Sun (1963, I argue that the intersection among existentialism and naturalism, on the one hand, and postcolonialism, on the other, intensifies the political relevance of the latter theory and better establishes the politically committed nature of Kanafani’s fiction of resistance. In the novella, the sun and the desert are a pivotal existential symbol juxtaposed against the despicable life led by three Palestinian refugees. The gruesome death we encounter testifies to the absurdity of life after attempts at self-definition through making choices. The gritty existence characteristic of Kanafani's work makes his representation of the lives of alienated characters more accurate and more visceral. Kanafani uses philosophical and sociological theories to augment the political nature of his protest fiction, one acting within postcolonial parameters of dispossession to object to different forms of imperialism and diaspora. Therefore, this article explores how global critical frameworks (naturalism and existentialism enrich the localized contexts essential to any study of postcolonial literature and equally move the traditional national allegory of Kanafani to a more realist/unidealistic level of political indictment against oppression.

Teaching Science Fiction by Women.

Science.gov (United States)

Donawerth, Jane

1990-01-01

Reviews the 200-year-old tradition of women science fiction authors. Discusses the benefits of teaching science fiction written by women. Describes 5 science fiction short stories and 5 science fiction novels suitable for high school students. (RS)

Patriarchal Regime of the Spectacle: Racial and Gendered Gaze in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Moussa Pourya Asl

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This article attempts to evince the political, cultural and affective consequences of Jhumpa Lahiri’s diasporic writings and their particular enunciations of the literary gaze. To do so, it details the manner in which the stories’ exercise of visual operations rigidly corresponds with those of the Panopticon. The essay argues that Lahiri’s narrative produces a kind of panoptic machine that underpins the ‘modes of social regulation and control’ that Foucault has explained as disciplinary technologies. By situating Lahiri’s stories, “A Real Durwan” and “Only Goodness,” within a historical-political context, this essay aims at identifying the way in which panopticism defines her fiction as both a record of and a participant in the social, sexual and political ‘paranoia’ behind the propaganda of America’s self-image as the land of freedom. We maintain that Lahiri’s fiction situates itself in complex relation to the postcolonial concerns of the late twentieth century, suggesting that through their fascination with a visual literalization of the panoptic machine, and by privileging the masculine gaze, the stories legitimate the perpetuation of socially prescribed notion of sexual difference.

Jordan Krall's speculative fiction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Doubinsky, Sebastien

2017-01-01

Jordan Krall is one of the most interesting writers in American speculative fiction. This article studies the way Krall redefines the tropes and frames of classical dystopian fiction and references, turning them into an idiosyncratic construction.......Jordan Krall is one of the most interesting writers in American speculative fiction. This article studies the way Krall redefines the tropes and frames of classical dystopian fiction and references, turning them into an idiosyncratic construction....

The Meanings and Dimensions of Citizens’ Political Identity: Approaching an Understanding of the Concept of Political Identity

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kristensen, Niels Nørgaard

The present article seeks to explore approaches to political identity in order to discuss and suggest an understanding of the term. There are several reasons for such a focus related to the salience of political identities in political affairs, as well as how identities function in people’s lives...

Poland’s Return To Europe: Polish Terrestrial Broadcasters And TV Fiction

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sylwia Szostak

2012-11-01

Full Text Available The changing political sphere in 1989 and the subsequent 2004 European Union accession had a profound impact on Poland’s economic, political and social spheres. Both events are considered to have marked Poland’s ‘return to Europe’ and strengthened the relations with its Western neighbours. This article examines the changing patterns of television fiction programming flow in Poland in the post-Soviet era, exploring the impact of those two events on Poland’s audiovisual sector. This article therefore assesses whether, and if so – how, this metaphorical ‘return to Europe’ is manifested on Polish television screens.

Affective Commitment among Student Affairs Professionals

Science.gov (United States)

Boehman, Joseph

2007-01-01

Student affairs professionals in the United States were surveyed to determine the predictive value of overall job satisfaction, organizational support, organizational politics, and work/nonwork interaction on affective organizational commitment. Results indicate that a supportive work environment leads to increased affective attachment to the…

Fiction and Organization Studies

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Savage, P. (Paul); J.P. Cornelissen (Joep); Franck, H. (Henrika)

2017-01-01

textabstractThe topic of fiction is in itself not new to the domain of organization studies. However, prior research has often separated fiction from the reality of organizations and used fiction metaphorically or as a figurative source to describe and interpret organizations. In this article, we go

Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Manjana Milkoreit

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Climate change places major transformational demands on modern societies. Transformations require the capacity to collectively envision and meaningfully debate realistic and desirable futures. Without such a collective imagination capacity and active deliberation processes, societies lack both the motivation for change and guidance for decision-making in a certain direction of change. Recent arguments that science fiction can play a role in societal transformation processes is not yet supported by theory or empirical evidence. Advancing the argument that fiction can support sustainability transformations, this paper makes four contributions. First, building on the imaginary concept, I introduce and define the idea of socio-climatic imaginaries. Second, I develop a theory of imagination as linked cognitive-social processes that enable the creation of collectively shared visions of future states of the world. This theory addresses the dynamics that bridge imagination processes in the individual mind and collective imagining that informs social and political decision-making. Third, emphasizing the political nature of creating and contesting imaginaries in a society, I introduce the role of power and agency in this theory of collective imagination. I argue that both ideational and structural power concepts are relevant for understanding the potential societal influence of climate fiction. Finally, the paper illuminates these different forms of transformational power and agency with two brief case studies: two climate fiction novels. I contrast a dystopian and utopian science fiction novel – Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife (2015 and Kim Stanley Robinson's Green Earth (2015. The two books are very similar in their power/agency profile, but the comparison provides initial insights into the different roles of optimistic and pessimistic future visions.

Multicolor-FICTION

Science.gov (United States)

Martín-Subero, José Ignacio; Chudoba, Ilse; Harder, Lana; Gesk, Stefan; Grote, Werner; Novo, Francisco Javier; Calasanz, María José; Siebert, Reiner

2002-01-01

Phenotypic and genotypic analyses of cells are increasingly essential for understanding pathogenetic mechanisms as well as for diagnosing and classifying malignancies and other diseases. We report a novel multicolor approach based on the FICTION (fluorescence immunophenotyping and interphase cytogenetics as a tool for the investigation of neoplasms) technique, which enables the simultaneous detection of morphological, immunophenotypic, and genetic characteristics of single cells. As prerequisite, multicolor interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization assays for B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and anaplastic large-cell lymphoma have been developed. These assays allow the simultaneous detection of the most frequent primary chromosomal aberrations in these neoplasms, such as t(8;14), t(11;14), t(14;18), and t(3;14), and the various rearrangements of the ALK gene, respectively. To establish the multicolor FICTION technique, these assays were combined with the immunophenotypic detection of lineage- or tumor-specific antigens, namely CD20 and ALK, respectively. For evaluation of multicolor FICTION experiments, image acquisition was performed by automatic sequential capturing of multiple focal planes. Thus, three-dimensional information was obtained. The multicolor FICTION assays were applied to well-characterized lymphoma samples, proving the performance, validity, and diagnostic power of the technique. Future multicolor FICTION applications include the detection of preneoplastic lesions, early stage and minimal residual diseases, or micrometastases. PMID:12163366

Från flygkamrater till “rymdrevolutionärer.” Om Sven Wernströms tidigaste science fiction

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Jerry Määttä

2012-11-01

Full Text Available “From Flight Comrades to Space Revolutionaries: On the Earliest Science Fiction of Sven Wernström”. The Swedish author Sven Wernström (b. 1925, mostly known for his political children's and young adult fiction, is also one of the most prolific and widely read Swedish writers of science fiction (sf. His first attempts in the genre consisted of stray sf elements in some of his aviation novels on “Flygkamraterna” (“The Flight Comrades”, 1947–1957, and the fullblown sf novel Flygkamraterna korsar rymden (“The Flight Comrades Cross Space”, 1949, which depicts a trip to Mars and an encounter with an alien civilisation literally divided into different strata in their underground society. This study examines the transition from Wernström's first aviation novels to his first sf novel, and studies the extent to which Wernström's early science fiction makes use of the specific conventions of the genre. After a very brief survey of the history of sf in Sweden up until the 1950s, this study deals with the two novels Flygkamraterna (“The Flight Comrades”, 1947 and Flygkamraterna korsar rymden when it comes to their view on science and technology, their uses of technological speculation and futurological extrapolation, estrangement, and evocation of the sublime. It is commonly believed that Wernström's writing didn't really become political until the 1960s. One of the main conclusions of this study, however, is that already in his earliest science fiction from the late 1940s, Wernström makes ample use of the genre's potential to conduct indirect social commentary.

Science Fiction & Scientific Literacy

Science.gov (United States)

Czerneda, Julie E.

2006-01-01

The term "science fiction" has become synonymous, in the media at least, for any discovery in science too incredible or unexpected for the nonscientist to imagine. One of the most common classroom uses of science fiction is for students to pick out flaws in science fiction movies or television shows. Unfortunately, this approach can result in…

Political Rationality

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Solhaug, Trond; Kristensen, Niels Nørgaard

The very idea about democracies is public participation in elections, decision-making and/or public engagement. The democratic participation distributes power among ordinary people and serve to legitimize decisions in public affairs and is a vital characteristic of a political culture.”The term...

High on Crime Fiction and Detection

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Grodal, Torben Kragh

2010-01-01

how crime fiction activates strong salience (in some respects similar to the effect of dopamine-drugs like cocaine, Ritalin, and amphetamine) and discusses the role of social intelligence in crime fiction. It further contrasts the unempathic classical detector fictions with two subtypes of crime...... fiction that blend seeking with other emotions: the hardboiled crime fiction that blends detection with action and hot emotions like anger and bonding, and the moral crime fiction that strongly evokes moral disgust and contempt, often in conjunction with detectors that perform hard to fake signals...

Augmenting the City with Fiction: Fictional Requirements for Mobile Guides

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjeldskov, Jesper; Paay, Jeni

2007-01-01

In this position paper, we discuss the user experience of a new genre of mobile guide services, which augments the users’ physical surroundings with fiction rather than with facts. First, we outline sources of inspiration from fiction, storytelling in place and on the move, and related research...

Psychologizing the Semantics of Fiction

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John Woods

2010-04-01

Full Text Available Psychologiser la sémantique de la fictionLes théoriciens sémantistes de la fiction cherchent typiquement à expliquer nos relations sémantiques au fictionnel dans le contexte plus général des théories de la référence, privilégiant une explication de la sémantique sur le psychologique. Dans cet article, nous défendons une dépendance inverse. Par l’éclaircissement de nos relations psychologiques au fictionnel, nous trouverons un guide pour savoir comment développer une sémantique de la fiction. S’ensuivra une esquisse de la sémantique.Semantic theorists of fiction typically look for an account of our semantic relations to the fictional within general-purpose theories of reference, privileging an explanation of the semantic over the psychological. In this paper, we counsel a reverse dependency. In sorting out our psychological relations to the fictional, there is useful guidance about how to proceed with the semantics of fiction. A sketch of the semantics follows.

Approaches to Scandinavian Crime Fiction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Agger, Gunhild

2010-01-01

as the approach of genre typology and the concept of evil – seemingly disparate concepts and approaches, but all related to the complex processes in the borderlands between crime fiction and society. Using examples from Scandinavian crime fiction, I discuss whether the growing proximity to international genres......The working paper discusses some of the major approaches to Scandinavian crime fiction in the light of the dominant features of crime culture, e.g. the broad exposure of crime fiction via different platforms and media. In this connection, the concept of mediatization is considered as well......, ways of production and standards increasingly removes Scandinavian crime fiction from its original attractions or not....

Speculation and Fiction: Introduction

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Sourit Bhattacharya

2015-07-01

Full Text Available As students of literature, one of the most frequent questions we encounter is: how does one write anything? What are the factors responsible for writing fiction? Does fiction have its autonomous qualities? Put in a slightly different way: what is thought or how is thought put into fiction? Broadly speaking, the study into the domain of thought is speculation. The Oxford English dictionary defines “speculation” this way: “the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence.”1 Speculation then is a field of thinking thought, conjecture, or hypothesis which seeks for evidence to become “fact” or “practice.” In such argument, the foundational aspect of all philosophy appears to be speculation. This won’t be an overstatement if we endeavour to trace the genealogy and use of the term in ancient Indian philosophy to the Greco-Roman world, or in the mediaeval scholastic philosophy in Europe.2 From the term’s rooted traditional philosophical basis to a particular meaning-making in genre fiction, there have been many developments but one aspect has been relatively unchanged: the question of conjecture. Speculative fiction does not have a rigid definition and is putatively understood to be an amalgam of many genres, forms, thoughts, or techniques. It is also about a world which is not necessarily the existent but in most cases the “material-possible”: the conjectural. Fiction in that analysis appears to be the medium through which the conjectural element of speculation is given a concrete material body. But fiction is not an end product only, the printed book or the text in this case, but also a world of ideas, thoughts, and imagination. In that sense, there is fiction already always within the “genre” of speculation. These are some of the interrelated but not always easily articulable aspects that we wanted to engage with in this volume, “Speculation and Fiction.”

The paradox of fiction: Emotional response toward fiction and the modulatory role of self-relevance.

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Sperduti, Marco; Arcangeli, Margherita; Makowski, Dominique; Wantzen, Prany; Zalla, Tiziana; Lemaire, Stéphane; Dokic, Jérôme; Pelletier, Jérôme; Piolino, Pascale

2016-03-01

For over forty years, philosophers have struggled with the "paradox of fiction", which is the issue of how we can get emotionally involved with fictional characters and events. The few neuroscientific studies investigating the distinction between the processing of real and fictional entities have evidenced that midline cortical structures and lateral fronto-parietal regions are more engaged for real and fictional entities, respectively. Interestingly, the former network is engaged in autobiographical memory retrieval and self-reference, processes that are known to boost emotional reactivity, while the latter underpins emotion regulation. Thus, a possible modulation of the emotional response according to the nature (real or fictional) of the stimulus is conceivable. To test this hypothesis, we presented short emotional (negative and positive) and neutral video as fictional or real. For negative material, we found that subjective emotional experience, but not physiological arousal measured by electrodermal activity, was reduced in the fictional condition. Moreover, the amount of personal memories linked to the scenes counteracted this effect boosting the subjective emotional response. On the contrary, personal memories elicited by the scenes, but not fiction, modulate the emotional response for positive material. These results suggest that when a stimulus triggers a personal memory, the emotional response is less prone to be modulated by contextual factors, and suggest that personal engagement could be responsible for emotional reaction toward fiction. We discuss these results in the emotion regulation framework and underline their implications in informing theoretical accounts of emotion in the neuroscientific domain and the philosophical debate on the paradox of emotional response to fiction. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.

JPRS Report, Soviet Union, Political Affairs

Science.gov (United States)

1989-12-07

in charge of policy on nationality, on the creation of a special department of the CPSU Central Committee, staffed by representatives of union...the situation on the level of the political behavior and attitudes of conflicting groups and, second, the academics’ own ethnocentric attitudes

Fiction and Non-Fiction Reading and Comprehension in Preferred Books

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Topping, Keith J.

2015-01-01

Are the books preferred and most enjoyed by children harder than other books they read? Are non-fiction books read and understood at the same level of difficulty as fiction books? The Accelerated Reader software offers computerized comprehension quizzes of real books individually chosen by children, giving children (and teachers, librarians, and…

Science Fiction and Science Education.

Science.gov (United States)

Cavanaugh, Terence

2002-01-01

Uses science fiction films such as "Jurassic Park" or "Anaconda" to teach science concepts while fostering student interest. Advocates science fiction as a teaching tool to improve learning and motivation. Describes how to use science fiction in the classroom with the sample activity Twister. (YDS)

Fictional Separation Logic

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Jonas Buhrkal; Birkedal, Lars

2012-01-01

, separation means physical separation. In this paper, we introduce \\emph{fictional separation logic}, which includes more general forms of fictional separating conjunctions P * Q, where "*" does not require physical separation, but may also be used in situations where the memory resources described by P and Q...

One rainbow, one nation, one tongue singing: whiteness in post-apartheid pulp fiction

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M.E. West

2011-07-01

Full Text Available A certain brand of fiction has become popular in post-apartheid South Africa that accounts for the relative success of Susan Mann‟s “One tongue singing” (2005. This article seeks to examine the implications of narratives such as this in revealing the normative assumptions that might inform text and reception a decade into a new democracy. It begins with an overview of whiteness studies as a post-colonial frame of reference useful in gauging the continued hegemonic normativity of whiteness as a cultural affiliation. This is followed by an analysis of Mann‟s novel. I argue that it is precisely in fiction such as this – massproduced for a white middle-class, mostly female readership both here and abroad – that there is ample evidence of the kinds of normative assumptions that whiteness studies attempts to make visible. I demonstrate that despite the writer‟s liberal and politically correct attempts to negotiate the politics of race, gender and class, her narrative inadvertently reinforces stereotypes that it ostensibly challenges. Thus it exhibits the discursive limits and powers of the most readily available reading matter this country has to offer.

Edibles and Other Offerings to Readers: The Politics of Gender and Food in Narrative Fiction

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Colăcel Onoriu

2016-11-01

Full Text Available From the perspective of an apparently absent author, the rhetorical commonplaces of womanhood and nourishment are mentioned in the novels of Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman (1969, and of Jillian Medoff, Hunger Point (2002. Although traditionally relegated to contextualizing devices, the unfolding of events makes a riddle out of cooking and eating for the purpose of dramatic effect. Reporting on what might come across as domestic chores points to the topicality of food intake as well as to all the drama eating disorders entail. In the background of events, the ‘whodunit’ and the ‘kitchen sink drama’ come together into one unlikely story. The benefits of hindsight make it possible to argue that celebrated feminist novels of the past century, i.e. The Edible Woman, provided later 21st century fiction, i.e. Hunger Point, with something more than narrative emphasis on binary gender relations. I find that the gender-roles debate, as recorded in Atwood’s work, gained enough cultural momentum to prove the ready availability of the image of the nurturing female throughout the 20th century and beyond. As far as feminist fictions are concerned, over/under-feeding is always somewhere in the background, if not what drives the plot forward. Commonly, distress among fictional characters, mostly women, is linked to body weight and dieting in ways that threaten to relegate, possibly once and for good, the notions of women and food to the realm of melodrama, as it is the case with Hunger point.

Politics in Fiction & Film: An Introduction & Appreciation. A Team-Taught Course.

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Krukones, Michael G.; And Others

An interdisciplinary course integrating political science, literature, and film is used at Bellarmine College in Kentucky as a vehicle for examining politics on the local, state, national and international levels. Four novels and their analogous films are used, corresponding to the respective political level--"The Last Hurrah,""All…

J. M. Coetzee and the Politics of Selfhood | Smuts | English in Africa

African Journals Online (AJOL)

J. M. Coetzee's most recent publication in the field of autobiographical fiction, Summertime (2009), opens with a description of a politically motivated murder of South African citizens in Botswana. This murder, we are told, is one in a long chain of political crimes, reported “week after week” (4) by the press, along with denials ...

'Limbitless Solutions': the Prosthetic Arm, Iron Man and the Science Fiction of Technoscience.

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Smith, Susan

2016-12-01

Early last year, a non-profit organisation called 'Limbitless Solutions' modelled a 3D printed prosthetic arm on a fighting suit that features in the popular superhero film series, Iron Man (2008-2013). In addition, 'Limbitless Solutions' resourcefully deployed the fictional character and inventor of the Iron Man suit, weapons specialist and philanthropist, Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr, in a celebrity/superhero endorsed promotional short film, showing 'Tony', the 'real Iron Man', gifting the futuristic military styled 'gauntlet' to Alex, a 7-year-old boy with a partially developed right arm. Engaging with scholarly work on the science fiction of technoscience, prostheses and the posthuman, and disability and DIY assistive technology, I analyse 'Limbitless Solutions' use of science fiction in a high-profile media event that problematically portrays an impaired child 'in need' of 'repair' and subsequently 'fixed' by technology. Overall, the aim is to integrate science fiction tropes, such as the wounded hero, the fighting suit and prosthetic arm, with disability studies, to highlight the sustained challenges that emerging theories of disability and technology face as contemporary economic, political and ideological forces endorse and promote militarised images of cyborg assimilation over human variation and physical difference. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

Science in Science Fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Allday, Jonathan

2003-01-01

Offers some suggestions as to how science fiction, especially television science fiction programs such as "Star Trek" and "Star Wars", can be drawn into physics lessons to illuminate some interesting issues. (Author/KHR)

Rapport sur l’affaire Darrieussecq // Report on the Darrieussecq affair

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Judit Lipták-Pikó

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Marie Darrieussecq, a contemporary French writer, had been accused of plagiarism several times during her career. Besides defending her reputation, these accusations forced her to think about her conceptions on fiction and writing. Finally, in Rapport de police, she succeeded in showing a mirror to the society of contemporary French writers, in which a tendency towards denying the legitimacy of fiction in certain cases can be observed. This phenomenon is diagnosed by Tiphaine Samoyault as the extension of the domain of plagiarism on simple particles of life. Behind this tendency resurges the old controversy of Plato and Aristotle on mimesis and fiction. Along with Jean-Marie Schaeffer’s analysis on the function of fiction from a cognitive point of view unfolds an apology for lecture and for a fictional writing that is capable of saying the inexpressible and speak for those who don’t have access to language.

Známé politické kauzy ve světovém filmu

OpenAIRE

Škoda, Jan

2017-01-01

This bachelor work deals with the problematics of well-known politics causes in the world of world - cinema. The theme is linked to the journalism and tries to define why the tales of journalists and their search for truth attract filmmakers worldwide. The first part of this work is about the possibilities of adaptations, genre definitions and fictional worlds of well-known politics causes. The second part of the work focuses of two examples of adaptating real pollitical affairs into moving p...

East Europe Report, Political, Sociological and Military Affairs, No. 2161

Science.gov (United States)

1983-07-06

Military Affairs Chemistry Cybernetics, Computers and Automation Technology Earth Sciences Electronics and Electrical Engineering Engineering and...language "from which classical Latin developed."^ An army journal undertook the task to explain the etymological origin of the designation Walach

The history of science fiction

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Roberts, Adam

2016-01-01

This book is the definitive critical history of science fiction. The 2006 first edition of this work traced the development of the genre from Ancient Greece and the European Reformation through to the end of the 20th century. This new 2nd edition has been revised thoroughly and very significantly expanded. An all-new final chapter discusses 21st-century science fiction, and there is new material in every chapter: a wealth of new readings and original research. The author’s groundbreaking thesis that science fiction is born out of the 17th-century Reformation is here bolstered with a wide range of new supporting material and many hundreds of 17th- and 18th-century science fiction texts, some of which have never been discussed before. The account of 19th-century science fiction has been expanded, and the various chapters tracing the twentieth-century bring in more writing by women, and science fiction in other media including cinema, TV, comics, fan-culture and other modes.

Engaging with the political imaginaries of science: Near misses and future targets.

Science.gov (United States)

Nowotny, Helga

2014-01-01

The current economic and financial crisis is also a political crisis that requires a rethinking of public engagement with science. In the past, the dominant focus of science, technology and society (STS) has led to a blind spot: political understanding and engagement of policy-makers and politicians with science, which is an integral part of any public engagement. Arguably, it is bound to and emerges from what Ezrahi calls collective political imaginaries. These are necessary fictions, which are causative and performative. In crude form, they manifest themselves in short-term impact measurements of every unit of scientific activity with citizens as the fictitious ultimate beneficiaries. In the future, STS can gain from coming up with a workable definition of the public interest with a focus on the public value of science. It can investigate collective imaginaries as they emerge from interactions with new media. As necessary fictions they may hold answers we never imagined them to hold.

Strengthening political co-operation through multilateral disarmament

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ekeus, R.

1991-01-01

In this paper, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Sweden discussed how the multilateral disarmament concept has contributed and still can contribute to strengthen political co-operation. This approach is the opposite to the usual question on how to achieve multilateral disarmament through political co-operation

The politics of location: Nadine Gordimer's fiction then and now ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Using theoretical perspectives derived from feminism and cultural geography, it argues that Gordimer's evocation of place is always politically charged but that there is a discernible shift in the underlying political ideology in the period between Burger's Daughter (1979) and The Pickup (2001). The essay suggests that ...

Literacy competence based on fiction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Broström, Stig

tool towards children's general Bildung and more specific development of literacy competence in the first years of school, in 2007 we carried out an investigation about fiction as a part of mother-tongue teaching and the process of children's learning to read. Via the investigation and general studies...... we want to get more knowledge ablout following questions:   How to define fiction which holds a personal and language "Bildung"? How to define the importance of fiction related to children's literacy competence? What kind of fiction do teachers use? How do teachers mediate fiction, how and in what...... extend do teachers make use of drawing and play activities? How to find a balance between to maintain the aesthetical and narrative methods and expressions AND gaining a literacy competence?   This paper has focus on the fourth question....

Hybrid Fictionality and Vicarious Narrative Experience

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hatavara, Mari Annukka; Mildorf, Jarmila

2017-01-01

This article discusses the recent trends in Fictionality Studies and argues for a point of view focusing more on the narrative dimension of fictionality than on the fictive story content. With the analysis of two case studies, where a non-fictional third person narrator represents the experience...... with other minds travel between fictional and nonfictional narratives, and between stories artistically designed and those occurring in conversational or documentary environments....

Emancipation in postmodernity : political thought in Japanese science fiction animation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Nakamura, M.

2017-01-01

Animation has long been overlooked as source for political thought. The aim of this thesis is to rectify this, and it will do so in two ways. First, it makes a theoretical and empirical case for animation as an intellectual source of political thought that should be used along with philosophical

Science fiction and the medical humanities.

Science.gov (United States)

Miller, Gavin; McFarlane, Anna

2016-12-01

Research on science fiction within the medical humanities should articulate interpretative frameworks that do justice to medical themes within the genre. This means challenging modes of reading that encourage unduly narrow accounts of science fiction. Admittedly, science studies has moved away from reading science fiction as a variety of scientific popularisation and instead understands science fiction as an intervention in the technoscientific imaginary that calls for investment in particular scientific enterprises, including various biomedical technologies. However, this mode of reading neglects science fiction's critical relationship to the construction of 'the future' in the present: the ways in which science fiction proposes concrete alternatives to hegemonic narratives of medical progress and fosters critical self-awareness of the contingent activity which gives 'the future' substance in the here-and-now. Moreover, the future orientation of science fiction should not distract from the function of medical science fiction as 'cognitive estrangement': the technological innovations that dominate science-fiction narratives are less concrete predictions and more generic devices that explain in historical time the origins of a marvellous world bearing provocative correspondences to our own, everyday reality. The editorial concludes with a series of introductions to the articles comprising the special issue, covering the print edition and a special online-only section. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

Deaf Culture and the Cochlear Implant Debate: Cyborg Politics and the Identity of People with Disabilities.

Science.gov (United States)

Cherney, James L.

1999-01-01

Examines the potential benefits and limitations of cyborg politics. Explores depictions of cyborgs in science fiction stories and examines the deaf culture's arguments in the cochlear-implant debate. Investigates the current viability of cyborg politics as a mode of advocacy for people with disabilities. (SC)

This Is Getting a Little Too Chinese for Me’: The Representation of China in Crime Fiction Written in English

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Isabel Santaulària i Capdevila

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The article addresses the representation of China in contemporary crime fiction written in English. A close examination of a selection of works set in China by Lisa See, Peter May, Catherine Sampson, Lisa Brackmann and Duncan Jepson reveals that, following the hardboiled tradition and crime fictions produced in post-colonial times, these narratives scrutinize the West’s many deficiencies. However, the authors do not articulate a truly postcolonial discourse aimed at destabilizing the notion of the assumed superiority of the West and its right to intrude in other countries’ affairs. Furthermore, these narratives seem to be written to confirm the readers’ worst expectations about China, which is fated to stay poor, backward and ultimately Other, unable to achieve some degree of ‘normalization’ or Westernization that could legitimize China’s claims to modernity, improvement and ascendancy in our global economy. Thus, as we vicariously travel the country through these narratives, we face the usual array of fraudsters, tricksters and blood-thirsty murderers that populate crime fictions, but it is China itself that is singled out as the true monster of the stories.

Anthropological reading of science fiction

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Ljiljana Gavrilović

2016-03-01

Full Text Available The paper gives an overview of the prevalence of the analysis of science fiction literature and science fiction in other segments of popular culture in Serbian anthropology. This overview is preceded by a consideration of science fiction as a genre while keeping in mind the fluidity of the genre and the interweaving of subgenres as well as the transformations which science fiction is undergoing in certain media (books, films, TV shows and video games. In Serbian anthropology research on science fiction is more prevalent than the study of other phenomena, as the number of anthropologists whose work is represented in the paper is fairly large compared to the size of the anthropological community as a whole. The causes for this can primarily be found in a collective focus on questions such as: who are we and who the others are, what the basis of creating and building identity is or what the role of context in recognition of species is. Anthropology gives answers to these questions through the interpretation, explanation and understanding of the world around us, while science fiction does it through the literary considerations of these same questions.

Role conceptions of public affairs practitioners in The Netherlands

NARCIS (Netherlands)

von den Driesch, D.; van der Wurff, R.

2016-01-01

Public affairs (PA) practitioners play an important role in political decision-making in modern democratic societies. This study gives a first insight in how these practitioners themselves perceive their role. Based on findings from previous empirical studies and normative democratic theories, three

Science Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays.

Science.gov (United States)

Rose, Mark, Ed.

The articles collected in this volume focus on the literary genre science fiction. Part one, "Backgrounds," includes "Starting Points" (Kingsley Amis), "Science Fiction and Literature" (Robert Conquest), and "The Roots of Science Fiction" (Robert Scholes). Part two, "Theory," contains "On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre" (Darko Suvin),…

Special science-fiction (Science Fiction Special).

Science.gov (United States)

Francais dans le Monde, 1985

1985-01-01

An issue devoted to the use of science fiction in the French language classroom discusses such topics as the development of the genre, literary techniques, themes, imagery, sociolinguistic elements, and potential classroom activities. (MSE)

USSR Report: Political and Sociological Affairs.

Science.gov (United States)

1986-07-18

something at which to look closely, besides porno - graphy. For example, to notice and report in good time that video takes root more rapidly far away from...of Video Technology (Vsevolod Vilchek; ZHURNALIST, No 5, May 86) . 42 Ukrainian Obkom Chief on Congress Propaganda Drive (B. Goncharenko...POLITICAL, SOCIAL ASPECTS OF VIDEO TECHNOLOGY Moscow ZHURNALIST in Russian No 5, May 86 pp 44-46 [Article by Vsevolod Vilchek, candidate of art

Corporate Fictions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Staunæs, Dorthe; Søndergaard, D. M.

2006-01-01

The article describes a particular strategy of communication called a social science fiction. The strategy was taken up following an empirical research project on gender and management, in order to communicate results to the company's managers and Human Resource Staff. The research results showed...... fiction was the kind of narrative therapy, which aims to reconfigure the problem in focus by a process of externalisation that allows a reconstruction and retelling of the issue. The article describes how three cultural mechanisms in the company were condensed into three imaginary figures: Mr. Corporate...

Fiction: Simulation of Social Worlds.

Science.gov (United States)

Oatley, Keith

2016-08-01

Fiction is the simulation of selves in interaction. People who read it improve their understanding of others. This effect is especially marked with literary fiction, which also enables people to change themselves. These effects are due partly to the process of engagement in stories, which includes making inferences and becoming emotionally involved, and partly to the contents of fiction, which include complex characters and circumstances that we might not encounter in daily life. Fiction can be thought of as a form of consciousness of selves and others that can be passed from an author to a reader or spectator, and can be internalized to augment everyday cognition. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

SCIENCE FICTION IN HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL LITERARY DISCOURSE

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Simona Siderevičiūtė

2014-04-01

Full Text Available This work intends to complement literary studies in science fiction. It discusses the history of global science fiction, overviews the most cha­racteristic features of its historical periods, and provides an introduction to Lithuanian science fiction, indicating its main features and topics. In the context of culture, science fiction is often defined as a literary genre with the emphasis on its nature as fiction. Only rarely are the history of the origin of science fiction, its variations, and the pioneers of science fiction whose works are still highly valued taken into account. Science fiction is often criticized through the filter of preconceived ideas that consider this type of literature to be “friv­olous.” This article discusses the possible reasons for such an approach. In Lithuania, this genre is still associated only with pop literature, and its expression cannot yet equal the works of foreign authors. The basic classical motifs of global science fiction found in Lithuanian science fiction include: representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations and human contact with them, scientists and inventors, agents of military institutions, and space travel. Lithuanian science fiction writers follow the tra­ditions of global science fiction when using these classical motifs; however, a general lack of original and individual themes, motifs, and manifestations may be observed.

USSR Report, Political and Sociological Affairs.

Science.gov (United States)

1984-03-15

an indivi- dual: culture, language, paternal or maternal descent, membership in a clan or the immediate feeling of belonging to his people. In... authoritarian - bureaucratic to revolutionary-demo- cratic. It is indicative that such approach is rejected by western liberal-bourgeois political theorists...at the kolkhoz and Nina Leonidovna at the present time is on a one and a half year’s maternity leave taking care of the baby. The young family has

Science Fiction: Serious Reading, Critical Reading

Science.gov (United States)

Zigo, Diane; Moore, Michael T.

2004-01-01

Science fiction deserves a greater respect, serious and critical reading and a better place in high school literature classes. Some of the science fiction books by Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Ray Bradbury and Octavia L. Butler and various activities for incorporating science fiction into the English language arts instruction classroom are…

Testimony, Documentary, Fiction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hansen, Hans Lauge

2017-01-01

to the memory of the Civil War and Francoist repression: the detective plot, the divided plotline between present and past, and metafictional reflections. But what role did it actually play in the development of the case of the stolen children? This paper studies the relation between different social discourses...... (testimony, fiction, investigative journalism, historiography) and different media (printed books, TV, cinema and theatre) in the development of the case, and explores the specific relation between documentary and fiction in this context. The article follows a line of dialogic interaction between social......This paper examines the remedialisation of the abduction of the children of “rojas” by the Francoist regime. In 2006 the Spanish author Benjamin Prado published Mala gente que camina, a novel that shares most of the characteristics of the fiction published after the turn of the millennium dedicated...

Science and Science Fiction

Science.gov (United States)

Oravetz, David

2005-01-01

This article is for teachers looking for new ways to motivate students, increase science comprehension, and understanding without using the old standard expository science textbook. This author suggests reading a science fiction novel in the science classroom as a way to engage students in learning. Using science fiction literature and language…

China Report, Political, Sociological and Military Affairs, No. 446.

Science.gov (United States)

1983-08-11

Islamism , Catholicism, and Protestantism) and is an inherent and "locally born and bred" religion in China. Taoism is a religion which respects Lao Zi...XINHUA, 7 Jul 83) 80 Taoism Reported Reviving Throughout Country (Tian Di; ZH0NGGU0 XINWEN SHE, 11 Jul 83) 81 ZH0NGGU0 QINGNIAN BAO...disciplined transport army with ideals, morality and culture. The conference was held from 1 to 6 July. CSO: 4005/1008 80 NATIONAL AFFAIRS TAOISM

The Fictions of Surrealism

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Walter A. Strauss

1996-06-01

Full Text Available Surrealism is an attitude toward life, even more than a literary and artistic movement. It aspired to no less than the remaking of man and the world by reintroducing "everyday" magic and a new idealization of the Female. In many respects, its goal was spiritual renewal. This enterprise was most prominently successful in the domain of poetry and painting. The major spokesman for the movement, Andre Breton, disliked the novel. Nevertheless, the members of the movement and their associates made numerous ventures into prose fiction, with notable results. Four types of fiction are delineated: the neo-Gothic romance; the adventure diary of "magic" experience—this one being probably the most typical of all the kinds of narrative invented; the erotic (or pornographic récit , and the linguistic extravaganza, in which language becomes the major instrument of sorcery. In many ways, the Surrealist "experiment" could be characterized as an attempt at the liberation of languages. This observation raises a number of questions about the impact of Surrealism on subsequent developments in French fiction (and the theatre, as well as upon its impact on Western fiction in general. The conclusion drawn is that Surrealist fiction has been a major contribution, a pioneering effort, in the shaking up of narrative concepts and techniques in the second half of the twentieth century.

Paranoia and Christianity in Maurice Dantec’s Crime Fiction

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Jean-Louis Hippolyte

2009-01-01

Full Text Available Maurice Dantec is “a prophet, a mystic, a Christian soldier, Zionist and pro-American, anti-secular and militantly counter-revolutionary. In short, the last scandal of French literature,” according to his editor David Kersan. Dantec’s brand of punk neo-Christian literary activism may feel somehow out of place in a literary milieu still beholden to the existentialism of Sartre and the revolutionary ethos of the 1960s. But Dantec’s “disgust” (of Old Europe, the creeping menace of Islam and the rampant march of secularization bears witness to a larger malaise. Along with Michel Houellebecq and Peter Sloterdijk, he testifies to the opening of a new chapter in the culture wars, to the rise of a new group of “écrivains maudits” who have decided to vehemently question postmodern nihilism and economic globalization. Finally, Dantec’s fiction makes a case for the need for faith in a Godless world. This essay is concerned with Dantec’s paranoid politics as they appear in his fiction, and most notably in his latest Christian futuristic trilogy. It is also concerned with the relevance of conservative Christian dogma in his work, both formally and rhetorically.

Chinese court case fiction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hansen, Kim Toft

2011-01-01

established as early as the 6th Century AD, whereas the first substantial evidence of the tradition is from 13th Century and the first Chinese crime fiction novels were written during the 17th Century. This article is, then, a corrective for the international history of crime fiction based on numerous...

THE DYNAMICS OF AFRICA IN WORLD AFFAIRS: FROM AFRO-PESSIMISM TO AFRO-OPTIMISM?

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Sharkdam Wapmuk

2018-02-01

Full Text Available African affairs contribute in shaping the world and Africa in turn is being shaped by by dynamics in international processes and structures. Africa’s position and role in world politics has been a subject of various interpretations between Afro-pessimists and Afro-optimists. The objective of this article is to examine, through a historical perspective, Africa in world affairs from slavery to colonialism; sovereignty, African states and world politics; Africa and the global political economy; Africa and international organizations, particularly the UN; African relations with the traditional and emerging economic powers, and the future of Africa in world politics. It made a strong case that studies on Africa affairs must take into full account historical realities of Africa’s emergence in the world system, its existence and elements of continuity and change in the relations between African states and with the rest of the world. Africa’s international relations have expanded beyond engagement with the great powers such as USA, Britain, France, to include emerging powers such as China and India. Accordingly, the narrative on Africa is gradually changing from a hopeless continent to an African rising. Given these developments, Africa must act in unity in addressing its many challenges, and seek to engage the international community as an equal player in world politics. The article recommends that the relationship between Africa and the international community must equally undergo a transformative change. It must be rooted in the principles of equality of nations and peoples; mutual collaboration for mutual interest and respect for the ability and right of Africans to lead their own change.

The creation of football slash fan fiction

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abby Waysdorf

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Although sports fandom and fan fiction are often thought of as different worlds, in the contemporary media environment, this is not the case. Sport is a popular source text for fan fiction, and high-level European football, one of the world's most watched sports, has long had an online fan fiction presence. In a study of the LiveJournal community Footballslash over the 2011–12 European football season, I investigate what makes football a suitable source text for fan fiction, especially slash fan fiction; what fan fiction authors are doing with football; and what this suggests about how football and fan fiction are used in the present day. I present a new understanding of football as a media text to be transformed as well as provide an in-depth look into how this type of real person slash is developed and thought of by its practitioners. In doing so, I show what happens when fandoms and fan practices converge in the 21st century.

ABOUT LOVE, MURDER AND EMERALDS. IOAN PETRU CULIANU'S ”SERIOUSLY” GAME WITH FICTION

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Ciprian Iulian TOROCZKAI

2015-11-01

Full Text Available This study looks into how Ioan Petru Culianu illustrated some of his ideas, as a historian of religions and as a philosopher of culture, in one of his literary works, The Emeralds Game. This novel is more than mere detective fiction, it is also a magic and esoteric novel, and to understand it we need to refer to magic, astrologic or geomantic practices. This means the considerations the author expressed in his other essential scientific works are “logically” extended, continued in this literary writing. The contemporaneity of the work is suggested by the significant fictional world it proposes, a world where the political blends with the religious, where reality blends with the psychological, science with adventure; all these aspects bring this novel to the same level with other similar novels, like Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose or Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.

Not Just Pulp Fiction: Science Fiction Integral to U.S. Culture and LC Collections.

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Eric A.; Stumbaugh, Colleen R. C.

1996-01-01

Traces the evolution of the science fiction genre and its representation at the Library of Congress, including original paperbacks, hardcovers, television, film, and sound recordings. Highlights include science fiction "classics", the Library of Congress collection development policy, library programs, and preservation activities…

["Scholar officials": thoughts on the involvement of professional nurses in the political process].

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Hsiu-Hung

2014-08-01

A growing number of nurses are concerned with / participate in public affairs, politics, and policymaking processes. In particular, nursing leaders are actively leveraging their collective power to create interdisciplinary alliances aimed at encouraging the media and government to confront key nursing issues and implement healthcare reform. This article highlights the political participation and policy-making process to address the meaning and essence of politics, politics and nursing, training and strategies of public affairs and political participation, the shift from academia to health policy, and facilitation of important health policies. It is hoped that nurses may appropriately use their status and influence to actively participate in political campaigns and the policymaking process. By using their professional knowledge and skills, nurses may not only protect patient safety and public health but also facilitate nursing professional development and promote the professional image of nursing.

Sacco e Vanzetti: caso giudiziario o affaire?

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Flavia Tudini

2013-08-01

Full Text Available This article focus on maybe the most striking judicial case in America during the early twenieth century. The Sacco and Vanzetti case. There is a widespead awareness about the crime they were accused for, the trial phases and their tragic end, but what about the defensive strategies adopted by their lawyers? The analisys of this theme and the involvement of the pubblic opinion demostrates how this jucidial case bacame an affaire, with a disrupting international eco, underestimated even by U.S. authorities. The pubblic opinion will elevate the two anarchists, crushed by injustice and the political trial, to icons of political struggle against the system.

Building Collections: Science Fiction

Science.gov (United States)

Krapp, JoAnn Vergona

2005-01-01

Fantasy and science fiction are two genres that are products of imagination. Both present alternate worlds governed by their own laws and values, but it is the plausibility of events in each world that sets the two apart. In fantasy, events happen by magic or inexplicable means. In science fiction, events could happen based on advanced…

The Future as Fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Jennings, Lane

Because good future studies and good fiction have a great deal in common, futurists need to recognize and apply the skills of word artists from all genres, particularly novelists and short-story writers. One form of science fiction that futurists could use is the scenario, which is an exploration of an alternative future. A good scenario should be…

Finding Time for Fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Justin M

2015-12-01

With growing advances in psychiatric care come growing amounts of knowledge to be read by psychiatry trainees. This essay presents one resident's experience putting aside some of the official psychiatric literature during residency in favor of more fiction, and his self-perceived growth because of that. Fiction, in the author's perspective, can make us all better psychiatrists.

The cognitive science of fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Oatley, Keith

2012-07-01

Fiction might be dismissed as observations that lack reliability and validity, but this would be a misunderstanding. Works of fiction are simulations that run on minds. They were the first kinds of simulation. All art has a metaphorical quality: a painting can be both pigments on canvas and a person. In literary art, this quality extends to readers who can be both themselves and, by empathetic processes within a simulation, also literary characters. On the basis of this hypothesis, it was found that the more fiction people read the better were their skills of empathy and theory-of-mind; the inference from several studies is that reading fiction improves social skills. In functional magnetic resonance imaging meta-analyses, brain areas concerned with understanding narrative stories were found to overlap with those concerned with theory-of-mind. In an orthogonal effect, reading artistic literature was found to enable people to change their personality by small increments, not by a writer's persuasion, but in their own way. This effect was due to artistic merit of a text, irrespective of whether it was fiction or non-fiction. An empirically based conception of literary art might be carefully constructed verbal material that enables self-directed personal change. WIREs Cogn Sci 2012, 3:425-430. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1185 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Fictional and Factual Discourses in Narratives - and the Grey Zone Between

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Søndergaard, Leif

2012-01-01

fictionalizing, non fiction fictionalizing and meta fictionalizing. Exemples from international literature during centuries. Part 2: Blending of discourses in contemporary Danish Literature with special focus on Knud Romer and Das Beckwerk (Claus Beck-Nielsen). Judicial and ethical problems in the use of proper......Part 1: Blurring of the border between public and private areas and increasing use of the reality effect in order to create authenticity. Various levels of fictionalizing: minimal fictionalizing, medium fictionalizing, extra fictionalizing, total fictionalizing, super fictionalizing, non...

From the wizard to the doubter: prototypes of scientists and engineers in fiction and non-fiction media aimed at Dutch children and teenagers.

Science.gov (United States)

Van Gorp, Baldwin; Rommes, Els; Emons, Pascale

2014-08-01

The aim of this paper is to gain insight into the prototypical scientists as they appear in fiction and non-fiction media consumed by children and teenagers in The Netherlands. A qualitative-interpretive content analysis is used to identify seven prototypes and the associated characteristics in a systematic way. The results show that the element of risk is given more attention in fiction than in non-fiction. Also, eccentric scientists appear more often in fiction. In non-fiction, the dimension useful/useless is more important. Furthermore, fictional scientists are loners, although in practice scientists more often work in a team. In both fiction and non-fiction, the final product of the scientific process gets more attention than the process itself. The prototype of the doubter is introduced as an alternative to the dominant representations because it represents scientists and engineers in a more nuanced way.

Political knowledge and awareness in adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Furnham, A; Gunter, B

1983-12-01

Although some work has been done on adolescents' political attitudes, very little work has been done on their political knowledge. This study aimed to replicate a large study carried out eight years ago (Stradling, 1977) to see whether recent political changes altered adolescents' political knowledge and secondly to investigate the determinants (demographic, media usage, interest) of this knowledge. The results were strikingly similar to those of Stradling despite the smaller sample and the changes over time. The subjects appeared to know most about responsibility for public services and party political leaders and least about party political or parliamentary procedure. The canonical variable that best predicted overall knowledge was interest in politics and current affairs and to a lesser extent TV news watching and discussions with adults. The results are discussed in terms of political socialization and limitations of this work are considered.

Gaps in Political Interest

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Robison, Joshua

2015-01-01

Political interest fundamentally influences political behavior, knowledge, and persuasion (Brady, Verba, & Schlozman, 1995; Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Luskin, 1990; Zukin, Andolina, Keeter, Jenkins, & Delli Carpini, 2006). Since the early 1960s, the American National Election Studies (ANES) has...... sought to measure respondents’ general interest in politics by asking them how often they follow public affairs. In this article, we uncover novel sources of measurement error concerning this question. We first show that other nationally representative surveys that frequently use this item deliver...... drastically higher estimates of mass interest. We then use a survey experiment included on a wave of the ANES’ Evaluating Government and Society Surveys (EGSS) to explore the influence of question order in explaining this systemic gap in survey results. We show that placing batteries of political...

Transgressing the Non-fiction Transmedia Narrative

OpenAIRE

Gifreu-Castells, Arnau; Misek, Richard; Verbruggen, Erwin

2016-01-01

abstractOver the last years, interactive digital media have greatly affected the logics of production, exhibition and reception of non-fiction audiovisual works, leading to the emergence of a new area called ‘interactive and transmedia non-fiction’. Whilethe audiovisual non-fiction field has been partially studied, a few years ago emerged a new field focusing on interactive and transmedia non-fiction narratives, an unexplored territory that needs new theories and taxonomies to differentiate f...

Between humans and beasts: the fictional uncanny in The Great God Pan and Shame

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shirley de Souza Gomes Carreira

2017-01-01

Full Text Available http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2017v70n1p91 The purpose of this work is to analyze two fictional works, Arthur Machen’s novella The Great God Pan and Salman Rushdie’s novel Shame, which contain unusual situations and events, examining them to discuss how the fantastic elements in both texts relate to the  context of production of the works, that is, respectively, the nineteenth century and the second half of the twentieth century. Machen promoted a break with the tradition of horror stories, then in vogue, and Rushdie introduced features of Magical Realism into the Indian Postcolonial Literature. Temporally distant, the two works resort to the same device, typical of fantastic fiction, the metamorphosis of characters, and, through it, the authors build a subliminal criticism of the political and social system dominant in their own time.

Translations on Eastern Europe, Political, Sociological, and Military Affairs, No. 1566

Science.gov (United States)

1978-07-20

HIRLAP, 9 Jun 78) 69 Activities of Foreign Affairs Institute Described (Jozsef Szasz ; MAGYAR HIRLAP, 24 May 78) 74 General Morocz Describes...Jozsef Szasz : "Villa on Berc Street"] [Text] The villa that is shared as "joint tenants" by the chief consulate section of the Hungarian Foreign

Stranger than fiction: literary and clinical amnesia.

Science.gov (United States)

Dieguez, Sebastian; Annoni, Jean-Marie

2013-01-01

This chapter broadly covers literary uses of amnesia and memory disorders. Amnesia in fiction offers authors an efficient and dramatic device to tackle themes such as identity, personal liberty, or guilt. We argue against the common complaint that fictional amnesia is scientifically inaccurate, pointing out that the goals of literature are different from those of science, that amnesia is still poorly understood, and that real-life cases can sometimes be stranger than fiction. The chapter provides examples from the neuropsychological literature, media reports, mythology, historical cases, detective stories, war stories, theatrical plays, and other genres. Special attention is given to retrograde and dissociative amnesia, as these are the most frequent types of amnesia portrayed in fiction, while other types of memory disorders are more shortly treated. We argue that the predominance of disorders affecting autobiographical memory in fiction is in itself a revealing fact about the mechanisms of human memory, illustrating how fictional treatments of pathology can inform back neurological and psychological research. Copyright © 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.

The Poetics of Design Fiction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Markussen, Thomas; Knutz, Eva

2013-01-01

Design fiction is an emergent field within HCI and interaction design, the understanding of which ultimately relies, so we argue, of an integrative account of poetics and design praxis. In this paper we give such an account. Initially, a precise definition of design fiction is given by drawing...

Media work as public affairs: moving beyond media savvy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Trapp, Leila; Laursen, Bo

Much research exists which examines how politically-motivated organizations adapt their communication practices to suit the news media’s routines and values to gain media coverage and thereby exert political influence. The mediatization literature describes these adaptation processes as constantly...... evolving, with professional communicators exhibiting an ever-growing amount of media savvy. The purpose of this study is to gain up-to-date insights into current forms of media adaptation in political organizations through interviews with professional press contact staff in 52 Danish interest groups....... The interviews reveal that media work is considered an effective, though potentially risky, form of public affairs. Indeed, media work is said to damage, or even ruin, an organization’s lobbying efforts or relationships with political actors. The study’s key finding is that in order to deal with these risks...

The home front : Internal organization of public affairs in Dutch subnational governments

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Figee, Edward L.; Gosselt, Jordi F.; Linders, Paul C.J.; de Jong, Menno D.T.

2017-01-01

Dutch subnational governments such as municipalities and provinces are increasingly compelled to express their interests in the national and European political arenas. Effectiveness in these arenas requires an optimal arrangement of Public Affairs (PA) activities in the subnational organization.

Fascinating! Popular Science Communication and Literary Science Fiction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Meyer, Gitte

2017-01-01

Some see literary Science Fiction as a possible vehicle for critical discussions about the future development and the ethical implications of science-based technologies. According to that understanding, literary Science Fiction constitutes a variety of science communication. Along related lines, ......, popular science communication with science fiction features might be expected to serve a similar purpose. Only, it is far from obvious that it actually works that way.......Some see literary Science Fiction as a possible vehicle for critical discussions about the future development and the ethical implications of science-based technologies. According to that understanding, literary Science Fiction constitutes a variety of science communication. Along related lines...

Intermediate Genre Study. Historical Fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Novelli, Joan; Lasky, Kathryn

1996-01-01

Students can learn to appreciate history as readers and writers of historical fiction. This section presents an introduction to historical fiction, a display idea, a mystery history game, discussion of character-building, charts for students to fill in with information on historical characters, suggestions for customizing writing centers and for…

Fictions et interactions : les fictions artistiques et la question de l’espace

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bernard Guelton

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Dans cette courte présentation, je vais esquisser quelques questions sur les rapports possibles entre l’espace et la fiction puis je vais faire un aperçu sur l’évolution de la ligne de recherche Fictions et interactions. Dans la première partie, je vais aborder trois questions : 1 le rapport entre la fiction et l’espace des images, 2 les espaces immersifs et 3 trois exemples d’oeuvres artistiques et performatives qui mettent en jeu les espaces en réalités alternées. RESUMO Nessa curta apresentação, vou esboçar algumas questões sobre as relações possíveis entre o espaço e a ficção, depois farei um panorama da evolução da linha de pesquisa Fictions & Interactions (Ficções & Interações. Na primeira parte abordarei três questões: 1 a relação entre a ficção e a espacialidade das imagens; 2 os espaços imersivos; e 3 três exemplos de obras artísticas e performativas que põem em jogo a noção de espaço em realidades alternadas. PALAVRAS-CHAVE Ficção, espaço, imersão.

Haruspicating With Science Fiction Or Through the Looking Glass -- Dimly.

Science.gov (United States)

Chatham, George N.

This paper examines the use of science fiction to predict the future. First, science fiction is compared to other fiction literature forms; then the changes in science fiction over the last 20 years are discussed. The influence of recent scientific advances on science fiction is also presented. The generation of alternative scenarios of the future…

Fictional Reports A Study on the Semantics of Fictional Names

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fiora Salis

2010-06-01

Full Text Available Normal 0 21 false false false ES X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabla normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Against standard descriptivist and referentialist semantics for fictional reports, I will defend a view according to which fictional names do not refer yet they can be distinguished from one another by virtue of their different name-using practices. The logical structures of sentences containing fictional names inherit these distinctions. Different interpretations follow.

The Return of Historical Fiction

Science.gov (United States)

Rycik, Mary Taylor; Rosler, Brenda

2009-01-01

Recently, historical fiction has begun to dominate major children's book awards. This article describes the values of using high-quality historical fiction in the classroom and presents different ways to respond to this genre including using modern technology. Two tables, one of picture books and one of novels, with paired nonfiction texts, are…

Teaching Tomorrow: A Handbook of Science Fiction for Teachers.

Science.gov (United States)

Calkins, Elizabeth; McGhan, Barry

Science Fiction appeals to young people and is suited for use in a wide range of classrooms. This handbook of Science Fiction for Teachers suggests ways of using Science Fiction to teach literature and English skills. Study guides based on two Science Fiction stories are presented, with activities such as individual papers and small group…

Why they won't save us: Political dispositions in the conflicts of superheroes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Woody Evans

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Comic book superheroes tend to be conservative and their opponents progressive. Here I explore the reasons for heroic conservatism, review recent disruptions to the trend, and consider what superhuman politics can tell us about our own transhuman and science fictional conditions.

Prophecy, Pulp, or Punt: Science Fiction, Scenarios, and Values.

Science.gov (United States)

Spinks, C. W.

A brief history of science fiction and an analysis of its functions precedes a description of a university level course taught at Trinity University on science fiction, technology, and values. Science fiction writing is briefly traced from Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" through the golden age of science fiction in the 1940s and 1950s to its…

Citizenship Education as a Panacea for Political Stability in Nigeria

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Nneka Umera-Okeke

inevitably generate conflicts that engender political instability in the political system of the country. In order to restore ... voting and paying taxes and also the benefits or entitlements that they have right to demand from the government ... public affairs, human conflict and its resolution and the sources and exercise of power”.

Reading fiction during sick leave, a multidimensional occupation.

Science.gov (United States)

Mårtensson, Lena; Andersson, Christina

2015-01-01

In bibliotherapy, the therapeutic gains of reading fiction are ascribed to the literature. Viewing reading fiction as an occupation may give other explanations of its therapeutic function. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of reading fiction among women during a period of sick leave. A qualitative approach was applied. Eight women who had been reading fiction during sick leave were interviewed. An overarching theme: Supporting one's active self, comprised five categories of experiences: a prospect of ordinary life, a place of refuge, a life together with others, a source of power, and as supporting an active life. Based on the categories, reading fiction is seen to comprise intentional, functional, mental, relational, and personal dimensions. A tentative model of supporting one's active self is proposed, which may be helpful in clarifying the mechanisms of the process of change. The health-related dimensions of reading fiction suggest that reading fiction should be regarded as a significant occupation comparable with other, more highlighted ones. Understood in this way, it is argued that the results add to the knowledge base in occupational therapy focusing on how meaningful occupations connect to occupational life trajectories.

A Study on Emotional Healing Efficacy of Fiction for Undergraduate

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chen Su-May Sheih

2014-01-01

Full Text Available In modern society, undergraduates may encounter multiple pressures and thus feel the sense of alienation, anxiety, disturbance and depression. For undergraduates, reading can be independently conducted without the intervention of an instructor; therefore, undergraduates who feel reluctant to expose private emotions to counselors can help themselves through the reading of emotional healing books. This is the application of bibliotherapy. Among various resources, fiction can serve as an appropriate emotional reading material. The researcher deployed semi-structured in-depth interview, and interviewed 21 undergraduates in Taipei City and Taipei County. This study is aimed to understand the kinds of fictions undergraduates read when they are upset and to analyze the emotional healing process of identification, catharsis, and insight so that the emotional healing efficacy can be evaluated. The findings showed that romance, realistic fiction, fantasy, martial arts novel, inspirational fiction, historical fiction, and science fiction can provide full process of emotional healing efficacy. However, detective fiction, online novel, psychological fiction, and horror fiction can only provide parts of the healing process. Besides, the healing efficacy of a specific fiction is different from reader to reader.

Science Fiction: Better than Delphi Studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Wolf, Milton T.

1994-01-01

Considers science fiction as a literary genre and as a predictor of technological advances, particularly in the information industry. An annotated bibliography is included of 11 science fiction titles and 1 nonfiction book that suggest possible information futures. (LRW)

Making fictions sound real

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Langkjær, Birger

2010-01-01

This article examines the role that sound plays in making fictions perceptually real to film audiences, whether these fictions are realist or non-realist in content and narrative form. I will argue that some aspects of film sound practices and the kind of experiences they trigger are related...... to basic rules of human perception, whereas others are more properly explained in relation to how aesthetic devices, including sound, are used to characterise the fiction and thereby make it perceptually real to its audience. Finally, I will argue that not all genres can be defined by a simple taxonomy...... of sounds. Apart from an account of the kinds of sounds that typically appear in a specific genre, a genre analysis of sound may also benefit from a functionalist approach that focuses on how sounds can make both realist and non-realist aspects of genres sound real to audiences....

The Art of Political Murder de Francisco Goldman y el policial de no-ficción entre Estados Unidos y Guatemala

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrea Pezzé

2016-05-01

Full Text Available This essay analyses the use of crime fiction in Francisco Goldman’s reportage The Art of Political Murder, and the contribution this makes to political change in the recent history of Guatemala. The aim of Goldman’s investigative report was not just to find a murderer, but above all to criticize the abuses of power perpetrated with impunity by the ‘State’, and the practices put in place to eradicate dissidence. To understand how the features of detective fiction are used in journalism to support the search for truth, the essay examines the social power of different typologies of Crime Novel. Goldman’s The Art of Political Murder is read from the viewpoint of literary Testimonio, against the Guatemalan and Central-American literary background, to see how it can contribute to the current struggle for identity.

Children Reading Fiction Books Because They Want To

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Ours, J.C.

2006-01-01

This paper investigates the reading of fiction books by 15-year-olds in 18 OECD countries.It appears that girls fiction books more often than boys, whereas boys read comic books more often than girls.The intensity by which children read fiction books is influenced by parental education, family

Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror 2000.

Science.gov (United States)

Voice of Youth Advocates, 2001

2001-01-01

Presents the annual annotated list of the best science fiction, fantasy, and horror titles for teens that have been reviewed in this journal. Also includes a sidebar with four annotated titles of nonfiction resources related to science fiction, fantasy, and horror. (LRW)

Politics in a Wired Nation.

Science.gov (United States)

Pool, Ithiel de Sola; Alexander, Herbert E.

The implications for American politics, public affairs broadcasting, and new reporting under different sorts of cable television (CATV) systems are considered in detail by this report. The authors believe that a contract carrier system is the most desirable, since it makes broadcast time most freely available and prevents the cable franchise owner…

Transnational Crime Fictions and Argentina's Criminal State

OpenAIRE

Caballero, Juan

2013-01-01

My dissertation, titled "Transnational Crime Fictions and Argentina's Criminal State," proposes a new understanding of the dictatorship novels of Ricardo Piglia, Juan José Saer, and Manuel Puig grounded in their shared appropriation from popular crime fiction. Across the 1940's, 50's, and 60's, a wide range of popular crime fiction was translated, written, theorized, printed and reprinted in Argentina, and these popular genres grew steadily in readership, visibility, and cultural legitimacy....

Booktalking Science Fiction to Young Adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Klause, Annette Curtis

1990-01-01

Identifies the elements of science fiction that might appeal to adolescent readers and offers suggestions for developing innovative book talks on science fiction books. A bibliography of 133 books, categorized by subgenres such as hard science, space travel, and mysteries, is provided. (eight references) (CLB)

Transgressing the Non-fiction Transmedia Narrative

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gifreu-Castells, Arnau; Misek, Richard; Verbruggen, Erwin

2016-01-01

abstractOver the last years, interactive digital media have greatly affected the logics of production, exhibition and reception of non-fiction audiovisual works, leading to the emergence of a new area called ‘interactive and transmedia non-fiction’. Whilethe audiovisual non-fiction field has been

Pseudoscience and science fiction

CERN Document Server

May, Andrew

2017-01-01

Aliens, flying saucers, ESP, the Bermuda Triangle, antigravity … are we talking about science fiction or pseudoscience? Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference. Both pseudoscience and science fiction (SF) are creative endeavours that have little in common with academic science, beyond the superficial trappings of jargon and subject matter. The most obvious difference between the two is that pseudoscience is presented as fact, not fiction. Yet like SF, and unlike real science, pseudoscience is driven by a desire to please an audience – in this case, people who “want to believe”. This has led to significant cross-fertilization between the two disciplines. SF authors often draw on “real” pseudoscientific theories to add verisimilitude to their stories, while on other occasions pseudoscience takes its cue from SF – the symbiotic relationship between ufology and Hollywood being a prime example of this. This engagingly written, well researched and richly illustrated text explores a wide range...

Towards a structure of feeling: abjection and allegories of disease in science fiction 'mutation' films.

Science.gov (United States)

Pheasant-Kelly, Frances

2016-12-01

This article considers differences between the representation of mutation in science fiction films from the 1950s and the present, and identifies distinctive changes over this time period, both in relation to the narrative causes of genetic disruption and in the aesthetics of its visual display. Discerning an increasingly abject quality to science fiction mutations from the 1970s onwards-as a progressive tendency to view the physically opened body, one that has a seemingly fluid interior-exterior reversal, or one that is almost beyond recognition as humanoid-the article connects a propensity for disgust to the corresponding socio-cultural and political zeitgeist. Specifically, it suggests that such imagery is tied to a more expansive 'structure of feeling', proposed by Raymond Williams and emergent since the 1970s, but gathering momentum in later decades, that reflects an 'opening up' of society in all its visual, socio-cultural and political configurations. Expressly, it parallels a change from a repressive, patriarchal society that constructed medicine as infallible and male doctors as omnipotent to one that is generally more liberated, transparent and equitable. Engaging theoretically with the concept of a 'structure of feeling', and critically with scientific, cinematic and cultural discourses, two post-1970s' 'mutation' films, The Fly (1986) and District 9 (2009), are considered in relation to their pre-1970s' predecessors, and their aesthetics related to the perceptions and articulations of the medical profession at their respective historic moments, locating such instances within a broader medico-political canvas. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

Gedanken fictions

Science.gov (United States)

Gardner, Kate

2017-07-01

The 14 pairs of short story and essay in Thought X: Fictions and Hypotheticals have at their root the concept that thought experiments in science and philosophy tell stories as they build a scenario to prove a point.

Emotional Sentence Annotation Helps Predict Fiction Genre.

Science.gov (United States)

Samothrakis, Spyridon; Fasli, Maria

2015-01-01

Fiction, a prime form of entertainment, has evolved into multiple genres which one can broadly attribute to different forms of stories. In this paper, we examine the hypothesis that works of fiction can be characterised by the emotions they portray. To investigate this hypothesis, we use the work of fictions in the Project Gutenberg and we attribute basic emotional content to each individual sentence using Ekman's model. A time-smoothed version of the emotional content for each basic emotion is used to train extremely randomized trees. We show through 10-fold Cross-Validation that the emotional content of each work of fiction can help identify each genre with significantly higher probability than random. We also show that the most important differentiator between genre novels is fear.

Fictional Discourse. Replies to Organon F Papers (Part II)

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Koťátko, Petr

2016-01-01

Roč. 23, č. 1 (2016), s. 102-124 ISSN 1335-0668 Institutional support: RVO:67985955 Keywords : fictional worlds * fictional characters * fictional names * pretense * text-work relation Subject RIV: AA - Philosophy ; Religion http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0258865

Fiction, History and Pedagogy: A Double-Edged Sword

Science.gov (United States)

Clark, Penney; Sears, Alan

2017-01-01

There are many areas of overlap between history and fiction. Teachers of history have long recognized this connection and used a range of fictional accounts in their teaching. In this article, we argue that fiction is a double-edged sword that must be handled carefully. On the one hand, it presents compelling characters and accounts that provide…

Urban Image in Iranian Fiction Films

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Azam Ravadrad

2011-11-01

Full Text Available Tehran as a symbol of Iranian modernity has been considered in many Iranian fiction films. Representation of Tehran in cinema can be the representation of Iranian modernity revolution. This study focuses on the representation of urban image in Iranian fiction films through critical theories such as Simmel or Benjamin opinions. In this article we discus about the mediator role of cinema for representing the Urban life Image and confliction of modernity in Iran.Meanwhile some megalopolis such as Paris, Berlin, Moscow, New York and sanpitersboorg est.…have had great opportunity for understanding confliction of modernity in their situation, Tehran has never have that chance. Regarding to this vacuum we want to explain the role of Iranian fiction films for understanding the entrance of modernity consequences in different eras. We believed that fiction films can represent confliction of city and village, represent of modern dualities, non cohesive rationality and many other gaps in Iranian modernity that we have to know.

Peak Politics: Resource Scarcity and Libertarian Political Culture in the United States

Science.gov (United States)

Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew

My dissertation uses the "peak oil" movement as a lens to analyze the convergence of apocalyptic environmental thinking and libertarian political culture in the recent United States. The "peak oil" movement was a twenty-first century American social movement of Americans who came to believe that oil depletion and other environmental problems would lead to the imminent collapse of global industrial society. Dedicated adherents developed a rich subculture, primarily online, and prepared themselves for the "post-carbon" future by conserving energy, changing occupations, and even purchasing land. Drawing on surveys of over 1,500 participants, ethnographic research, discourse analysis of peak oil websites and literary analysis of subcultural fiction, my research reveals a group of mostly white, male, liberal Americans struggling with the perceived threat of economic, environmental and geopolitical decline while the country undergoes a broad shift in political culture: the continued rise of libertarian ideals, accelerated by the influence of Internet technology. I view this apocalyptic subculture in the context of petroleum dependence, eco-apocalyptic discourses, the environmental discourse of "limits to growth," white masculinity, climate change, and the influence of conservative individualism on American political culture.

Hypothetical Politics. The Representation of Reality between Utopia and Leviathan

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Silvia Rodeschini

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Utopia and political science are not sharply antithetical models of approach to politics. As Hans Blumenberg points out, they were born at the same time as alternatives to the model of the Platonic philosophical inquiry, and have continued to develop in parallel. Their diversity will be illustrated by examining the role of fiction in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and James Harrington's Commonwealth of Oceana. Describing the different role it plays in these works, the essay shows how they both use this concept to solve the problem of the uncertainty of knowledge and the intransparency of the world.

Blood, politics, and social science. Richard Titmuss and the Institute of Economic Affairs, 1957-1973.

Science.gov (United States)

Fontaine, Philippe

2002-09-01

Long before his last book, The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy, was published in early 1971, Richard M. Titmuss (1907-1973), a professor of social administration at the London School of Economics, had been a major figure in the debates over the welfare state. The Gift Relationship was the culmination of an eventful relationship with the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank that advocated the extension of rational pricing to social services. By arguing that the British system of blood procurement and distribution, based on free giving within the National Health Service, was more efficient than the partly commercialized American system, Titmuss intended to signal the dangers of the increasing commercialization of society. What made for the impact of his book, however, was not merely its argument that transfusion-transmitted infections were much more common with paid than with voluntary donors, but also its reflections on what it is that holds a society together. And here Titmuss argued that a "socialist" social policy, by encouraging the sense of community, played a central role. The eclecticism of Titmuss's work, together with its strong ethical and political flavor, makes it a rich and original account of the "social" at a time when heated debated over social policy, both in Britain and in the United States, raised the question of the division of labor among the social sciences.

Distinguishing fiction from non-fiction with complex networks

Science.gov (United States)

Larue, David M.; Carr, Lincoln D.; Jones, Linnea K.; Stevanak, Joe T.

2014-03-01

Complex Network Measures are applied to networks constructed from texts in English to demonstrate an initial viability in textual analysis. Texts from novels and short stories obtained from Project Gutenberg and news stories obtained from NPR are selected. Unique word stems in a text are used as nodes in an associated unweighted undirected network, with edges connecting words occurring within a certain number of words somewhere in the text. Various combinations of complex network measures are computed for each text's network. Fisher's Linear Discriminant analysis is used to build a parameter optimizing the ability to separate the texts according to their genre. Success rates in the 70% range for correctly distinguishing fiction from non-fiction were obtained using edges defined as within four words, using 400 word samples from 400 texts from each of the two genres with some combinations of measures such as the power-law exponents of degree distributions and clustering coefficients.

Emotional Sentence Annotation Helps Predict Fiction Genre.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Spyridon Samothrakis

Full Text Available Fiction, a prime form of entertainment, has evolved into multiple genres which one can broadly attribute to different forms of stories. In this paper, we examine the hypothesis that works of fiction can be characterised by the emotions they portray. To investigate this hypothesis, we use the work of fictions in the Project Gutenberg and we attribute basic emotional content to each individual sentence using Ekman's model. A time-smoothed version of the emotional content for each basic emotion is used to train extremely randomized trees. We show through 10-fold Cross-Validation that the emotional content of each work of fiction can help identify each genre with significantly higher probability than random. We also show that the most important differentiator between genre novels is fear.

Emotional Sentence Annotation Helps Predict Fiction Genre

Science.gov (United States)

Samothrakis, Spyridon; Fasli, Maria

2015-01-01

Fiction, a prime form of entertainment, has evolved into multiple genres which one can broadly attribute to different forms of stories. In this paper, we examine the hypothesis that works of fiction can be characterised by the emotions they portray. To investigate this hypothesis, we use the work of fictions in the Project Gutenberg and we attribute basic emotional content to each individual sentence using Ekman’s model. A time-smoothed version of the emotional content for each basic emotion is used to train extremely randomized trees. We show through 10-fold Cross-Validation that the emotional content of each work of fiction can help identify each genre with significantly higher probability than random. We also show that the most important differentiator between genre novels is fear. PMID:26524352

Writing the irogonomi: Sexual politics, Heian-style

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

April Sprague

2011-12-01

Full Text Available Promiscuous “connoisseurs of love” (irogonomi such as the fictional Genji and the semi- legendary Ariwara no Narihira have come to define popular perception of Heian period sexual politics; that is, their names have become shorthand for male privilege over women. In this article I will complicate established ideas regarding male promiscuity and privilege in the Heian period through an examination of Tales of Ise, Tale of Lady Ochikubo and Tale of Genji. I argue that, although women’s status as linchpins in the practice of “marriage politics” rarely translated into women’s individual empowerment, men’s reliance on marriage politics placed restrictions on men’s sexuality in ways that are rarely acknowledged by modern scholarship.

Translations on Eastern Europe, Political, Sociological, and Military Affairs, Number 1567.

Science.gov (United States)

1978-07-21

confirmation of the Porter Snob abrid/ajanie en-’? oppression-—cor ".equeneer" of the political and militar-/- relatio^a eet~b- liehed in favor of the...bold defiance to fascism. In this regard, the RCP also addressed appeals many times to the most diverse parties and political groupings and obtained

Twitter Fiction: A New Creative Literary Landscape

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Laila Al Sharaqi

2016-08-01

Full Text Available Twitter, synonymous with social networking, has become a successful social platform for the exchange of ideas, news, and information. It has also emerged as an experimental platform through which users explore creative realms of poetic and narrative content, albeit in 140 characters. The real-time tweets are fundamentally unique and increasingly sophisticated. The attention deficit generation of the fast-paced contemporary world has little time on its hands for extended discourse. Brief stories have been told throughout human history, however, the popularity of short stories skyrocketed with the advent of digital story telling. Twitter has now become a frontier medium that allows a unique mode of digital storytelling that facilitates creative literary experimentation. Twitter offers a unique freedom to writers insofar as a tweet can be an entire bite-sized story or even a snapshot of a story that requires readers’ active imagination to complete. Twitter fiction signifies stylistic word economy, compactness, symbolic structure, and implied narrative. Fragmentariness of the story is a marker of Twitter fiction. The proponents of Twitter fiction enjoy the originality, freedom, and diversity of perspectives offered by the Twitter fiction. Critics, however, argue that the mandated 140 character limitation stunts story development and strangulates creativity. This paper examines Twitter fiction and proposes that limited characters stories are the evolutionary answer to the reduced attention span of the tech-savvy generation. Keywords: twitterature, fiction, brevity, literary art

When Fiction Is Just as Real as Fact: No Differences in Reading Behavior between Stories Believed to be Based on True or Fictional Events

Science.gov (United States)

Hartung, Franziska; Withers, Peter; Hagoort, Peter; Willems, Roel M.

2017-01-01

Experiments have shown that compared to fictional texts, readers read factual texts faster and have better memory for described situations. Reading fictional texts on the other hand seems to improve memory for exact wordings and expressions. Most of these studies used a “newspaper” vs. “literature” comparison. In the present study, we investigated the effect of reader's expectation to whether information is true or fictional with a subtler manipulation by labeling short stories as either based on true or fictional events. In addition, we tested whether narrative perspective or individual preference in perspective taking affects reading true or fictional stories differently. In an online experiment, participants (final N = 1,742) read one story which was introduced as based on true events or as fictional (factor fictionality). The story could be narrated in either 1st or 3rd person perspective (factor perspective). We measured immersion in and appreciation of the story, perspective taking, as well as memory for events. We found no evidence that knowing a story is fictional or based on true events influences reading behavior or experiential aspects of reading. We suggest that it is not whether a story is true or fictional, but rather expectations toward certain reading situations (e.g., reading newspaper or literature) which affect behavior by activating appropriate reading goals. Results further confirm that narrative perspective partially influences perspective taking and experiential aspects of reading. PMID:28983269

When Fiction Is Just as Real as Fact: No Differences in Reading Behavior between Stories Believed to be Based on True or Fictional Events

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Franziska Hartung

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Experiments have shown that compared to fictional texts, readers read factual texts faster and have better memory for described situations. Reading fictional texts on the other hand seems to improve memory for exact wordings and expressions. Most of these studies used a “newspaper” vs. “literature” comparison. In the present study, we investigated the effect of reader's expectation to whether information is true or fictional with a subtler manipulation by labeling short stories as either based on true or fictional events. In addition, we tested whether narrative perspective or individual preference in perspective taking affects reading true or fictional stories differently. In an online experiment, participants (final N = 1,742 read one story which was introduced as based on true events or as fictional (factor fictionality. The story could be narrated in either 1st or 3rd person perspective (factor perspective. We measured immersion in and appreciation of the story, perspective taking, as well as memory for events. We found no evidence that knowing a story is fictional or based on true events influences reading behavior or experiential aspects of reading. We suggest that it is not whether a story is true or fictional, but rather expectations toward certain reading situations (e.g., reading newspaper or literature which affect behavior by activating appropriate reading goals. Results further confirm that narrative perspective partially influences perspective taking and experiential aspects of reading.

"Frankenstein" as Science Fiction and Fact

Science.gov (United States)

van der Laan, J. M.

2010-01-01

Often called the first of its kind, "Frankenstein" paved the way for science fiction writing. Its depiction of a then impossible scientific feat has in our time become possible and is essentially recognizable in what we now refer to as bioengineering, biomedicine, or biotechnology. The fiction of "Frankenstein" has as it were given way to…

A Computer-Assisted Instruction in Teaching Abstract Statistics to Public Affairs Undergraduates

Science.gov (United States)

Ozturk, Ali Osman

2012-01-01

This article attempts to demonstrate the applicability of a computer-assisted instruction supported with simulated data in teaching abstract statistical concepts to political science and public affairs students in an introductory research methods course. The software is called the Elaboration Model Computer Exercise (EMCE) in that it takes a great…

21st Century South African Science Fiction

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CARAIVAN LUIZA

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The paper analyses some aspects of South African science fiction, starting with its beginnings in the 1920s and focusing on some 21st century writings. Thus Lauren Beukes’ novels Moxyland (2008 and Zoo City (2010 are taken into consideration in order to present new trends in South African literature and the way science fiction has been marked by Apartheid. The second South African science fiction writer whose writings are examined is Henrietta Rose-Innes (with her novel Nineveh, published in 2011 as this consolidates women's presence in the SF world.

The evolution and extinction of science fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Hrotic, Steven

2014-11-01

Science fiction literature reflects our constantly evolving attitudes towards science and technological innovations, and the kinds of societal impacts believed possible. The newly popular subgenre 'steampunk' shows that these attitudes have significantly shifted. Examined from a cognitive anthropological perspective, science fiction reveals the cultural evolution of the genre as intelligently designed, and implies a cognitive mechanism of group membership reliant on implicit memory. However, such an analysis also suggests that genre science fiction as it was in the 20th century may no longer exist. © The Author(s) 2013.

Actualism and Fictional Characters

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André Leclerc

2016-04-01

Full Text Available http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2016v20n1p61 In what follows, I present only part of a program that consists in developing a version of actualism as an adequate framework for the metaphysics of intentionality. I will try to accommodate in that framework suggestions found in Kripke’s works and some positions developed by Amie Thomasson. What should we change if we accept “fictional entities” in the domain of the actual world? Actualism is the thesis that everything that exists belongs to the domain of the actual world and that there are no possibilia. I shall defend that there are abstract artefacts, like fictional characters, and institutions. My argument could be seen as a version of Moore’s paradox: it is paradoxical to say: “I made (created it, but I do not believe it exists”. Moreover, there are true sentences about them. I will examine what it means to include abstract artefacts in the domain of the actual world. I favour a use of “exist” that includes beings with no concrete occupation of tri-dimensional space; to exist, it is enough to have been introduced at some moment in history. Abstract artefacts, like fictional characters, exist in that sense. I argue that it is important to distinguish two perspectives (internal and external in order to clarify the kind of knowledge we have of fictional characters. However, their existence presupposes a relation of dependence to a material basis and the mental activities of many people.

Vers une esthétique de la science-fiction

OpenAIRE

Russ, Joanna

2013-01-01

Les outils critiques élaborés en ayant à l’esprit une littérature entièrement différente ne fonctionnent pas quand ils sont appliqués à la science-fiction. Dans cet article, j’avance la proposition suivante : que la science-fiction est didactique. Malgré des similitudes superficielles avec la fiction moderne naturaliste (ou autre), les personnages de science-fiction sont toujours des personnes collectives, jamais individuelles. Je suggère que la critique littéraire contemporaine n’est pas l’...

Journeys beyond pages: The use of fiction in tourism

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lipovšek Emilija

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The paper aims at looking into the examples of most popular literary induced tours on the European continent in order to establish interconnectivity between works of fiction as created cultural forms and their impact on tourism industry and consumer society. Accordingly, not only does the human urge to travel refer to the phenomenon of escapism and escapism into fictional, but it is also intrinsically linked to the fact of recreating oneself, i.e. finding one's own destiny/destination. Therefore, the focus is on the acknowledgement that fictional is employed in the non-fictional setting so as to produce man-made tourist attractions. Thus, the illusion of the fictional is perpetuated into the actual places used as attractions for avid readers and cinephiles. For instance, 221b Baker Street in London known as the Sherlock Holmes's home is recreated in reality and made into a museum for those intrigued by the mystery of Conan Doyle's fiction. The tourist is thus perceived both as a consumer and homo ludens in the postmodern contemporary context. The same way as a reader immerses into the text, the tourist embarks on a journey. Thus, various literary tours represent a twofold experience of the fictional world.

The politics of cyborgs in Mexico and Latin America

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mary Elizabeth Ginway

2013-12-01

Full Text Available This article focuses on the cyborg body in contemporary Mexican science fiction, contrasting it with its depiction in other countries of Latin America. Beginning in the 1990s, Mexican science fiction authors write stories about implants and neo-cyborgs, anticipating Alex Rivera’s portrait of “cybraceros” in his 2008 film Sleep Dealer by nearly a decade. The defiant cyborgs of Mexico are distinct from those of the Southern Cone, where they relate most often to torture and unresolved political issues from the period of re-democratization, and from those of Brazil, where they are related to issues of race and urbanization.  While in Mexico and Brazil the cyborg is often used as a critique of neoliberal policies and the privatization of public industries, the insistence on the embodiment of cyborgs in Mexico is often tied to labor and border issues, problematizing the idea of cyborg-mestizaje or hybridity.  Heriberto Yepez questions concepts of hybridity that diminish the inherent sense of difference and struggle through a discourse of conciliation. The Mexican cyborg figure that insists on the importance of its body time and again demonstrates its resistance to facile notions of political and cybernetic hybridity

Faith Fictions: "The Word between This World and God"

Science.gov (United States)

Le Tran, Mai-Anh

2009-01-01

The search for religious truth and depth in "fiction" invites a conceptualization of life and fictional narratives as "faith fictions"--narrative accounts of human experiences and the human condition that bridge this world and God. This article juxtaposes "Mother Crocodile", "Hunger", and "Lost in Translation" to highlight the ways in which they,…

Psychopathy and the cinema: fact or fiction?

Science.gov (United States)

Leistedt, Samuel J; Linkowski, Paul

2014-01-01

The authors investigated the relationship between cinema and psychopathy to describe and analyze the portrayal of fictional psychopathic characters in popular films and over cinematic history. From 400 films (1915-2010), 126 fictional psychopathic characters (21 female and 105 male) were selected based on the realism and clinical accuracy of their profiles. Movies were then analyzed by senior forensic psychiatrists and cinema critics. Secondary (71%) and manipulative (48%) subtypes were the most common in the female group, while secondary (51%) and prototypical (34%) were the most common in the male group. Corresponding to the increased understanding of clinical psychopathy by professional mental health providers over time, the clinical description of and epidemiological data on fictional psychopaths in popular films have become more realistic. Realistic fictional psychopaths remain in the minority but are very important for didactic purposes in Academic facilities, as "teaching Movies." © 2013 American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

Horror from the Soul--Gothic Style in Allan Poe's Horror Fictions

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Chunyan

2015-01-01

Edgar Allan Poe made tremendous contribution to horror fiction. Poe's inheritance of gothic fiction and American literature tradition combined with his living experience forms the background of his horror fictions. He inherited the tradition of the gothic fictions and made innovations on it, so as to penetrate to subconsciousness. Poe's horror…

First Contact: Science Fiction in the Library, 1920-1949.

Science.gov (United States)

Sullivan, Kathryn

This report examining the status of science fiction in libraries during the 30-year period of the genre's infancy discusses past attitudes toward science fiction and policies concerning its selection and acquisition. In order to determine how strong an influence reviews would have been on the purchase of science fiction, the book announcements and…

JPRS Report, Soviet Union, Political Affairs, Republic Language Legislation.

Science.gov (United States)

1989-12-05

Goskomizdat Ensure that auditoria in the republic capital and in cities of republic subordination where basic political activities are carried on, and...also the auditoria of theater and entertainment enterprises in these cities, are equipped with the technical facilities for simultaneous translation

Curbing Electoral Violence in Nigeria: The Imperative of Political ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

User

to choose those who will run the affairs of the state in a given period. ..... short and long term deepen our political culture and socialization processes. Therefore .... Commemoration of Shehu Yar'Adua Memorial Forum delivered on March. 19.

De l’avantage (ou non) de définir la science-fiction : théorie des genres, science-fiction et Histoire

OpenAIRE

Rieder, John

2013-01-01

Cet essai a pour but d’aider à la clarification et au renforcement de l’impact d’une théorie historique des genres dans les études sur la science-fiction. Il explique et défend cinq propositions sur ce genre, chacune pouvant servir de thèse en elle-même : la science-fiction est historique et mouvante ; la science-fiction n’a pas d’essence, pas de caractéristique unifiante, et pas de point originel ; la science-fiction n’est pas un ensemble de textes, mais plutôt un usage des textes et une man...

Apps: a new medium for non-fiction innovation

OpenAIRE

Allen, Catherine

2015-01-01

Apps are now a dominant content medium: in the US people spend more time on apps than they do watching TV. Non-fiction content is being avidly consumed on mobile devices, but in a completely different way to the book model. This article explores three strands of potential that the app medium holds for non-fiction content, putting forward the case that apps have the power to further weave non-fiction into the fabric of society and life.

Emotional responses to interactive fictions

OpenAIRE

Hagger, Andrzej

2012-01-01

We commonly feel a variety of emotional responses to works of fiction. In this thesis I propose to examine what we understand by the terms fictional and narrative, and to describe what sorts of narrator might be required within a narrative work. Of particular interest are interactive works of art, both narrative and non-narrative, and I provide a definition of what features a work should possess if it should properly be considered interactive. I discuss the notions of interactive narrative...

Money and Politics: Who Owns Democracy? NIF Report on the Issues, 2001.

Science.gov (United States)

National Issues Forums, Dayton, OH.

National Issues Forums (NIF) bring together citizens to deliberate and make choices about challenging social and political issues of the day. These forums have addressed issues such as the economy, education, health care, foreign affairs, and crime. This report is an analysis of what happened in a forum on "Money and Politics" that took…

Radioactivity and Nuclear Issues in Science Fiction

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Franic, Z.

2008-01-01

In this work are presented and reviewed science fiction narratives, films and comics that exploit radioactivity and nuclear issues. These topics to some science fiction authors serve as metaphor of evil and holocaust as well as nice instrument for elaborating various manipulations and conspiracy theories. In that context are of special interest science fiction works depicting apocalyptic post-nuclear worlds and societies, such works being closely connected with cyberpunk genre. However, other more technologically optimistic authors nuclear energy and research regarding nuclear technology and radioactivity consider as eligible and inevitable solution for world peace and prosperity Nowadays, public interest and global fears are shifted from radioactivity and nuclear issues to other catastrophic scenarios threatening future of the mankind, these for example being climate changes and global warming, asteroid impact, collapse of information infrastructure, nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence etc. Consequently, these issues are as well increasingly reflected in contemporary science fiction stories.(author)

The material co-construction of hard science fiction and physics

Science.gov (United States)

Hasse, Cathrine

2015-12-01

This article explores the relationship between hard science fiction and physics and a gendered culture of science. Empirical studies indicate that science fiction references might spur some students' interest in physics and help develop this interest throughout school, into a university education and even further later inspire the practice of doing science. There are many kinds of fiction within the science fiction genre. In the presented empirical exploration physics students seem particularly fond of what is called `hard science fiction': a particular type of science fiction dealing with technological developments (Hartwell and Cramer in The hard SF renaissance, Orb/TOR, New York, 2002). Especially hard science fiction as a motivating fantasy may, however, also come with a gender bias. The locally materialized techno-fantasies spurring dreams of the terraforming of planets like Mars and travels in time and space may not be shared by all physics students. Especially female students express a need for other concerns in science. The entanglement of physics with hard science fiction may thus help develop some students' interest in learning school physics and help create an interest for studying physics at university level. But research indicates that especially female students are not captured by the hard techno-fantasies to the same extent as some of their male colleagues. Other visions (e.g. inspired by soft science fiction) are not materialized as a resource in the local educational culture. It calls for an argument of how teaching science is also teaching cultural values, ethics and concerns, which may be gendered. Teaching materials, like the use of hard science fiction in education, may not just be (yet another) gender bias in science education but also carrier of particular visions for scientific endeavours.

Apps: a new medium for non-fiction innovation

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Catherine Allen

2015-07-01

Full Text Available Apps are now a dominant content medium: in the US people spend more time on apps than they do watching TV. Non-fiction content is being avidly consumed on mobile devices, but in a completely different way to the book model. This article explores three strands of potential that the app medium holds for non-fiction content, putting forward the case that apps have the power to further weave non-fiction into the fabric of society and life.

East Europe Report, Political, Sociological and Military Affairs

Science.gov (United States)

1984-09-06

CNS here, the reader will not know, I am sure, what it means, although it is simple. The reader has seen it as often as, say, the slogan. " Smoke ...It can be done. If, let us suppose, our distinguished ruler was not only just but also abstinent , then the menu would list only authentic juices and...not to mention the unemployed, seasonal workers and other groups which have become altogether marginalized as far as politics go. [Question] Why

Vers une esthétique de la science-fiction

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Joanna Russ

2013-04-01

Full Text Available Les outils critiques élaborés en ayant à l’esprit une littérature entièrement différente ne fonctionnent pas quand ils sont appliqués à la science-fiction. Dans cet article, j’avance la proposition suivante : que la science-fiction est didactique. Malgré des similitudes superficielles avec la fiction moderne naturaliste (ou autre, les personnages de science-fiction sont toujours des personnes collectives, jamais individuelles. Je suggère que la critique littéraire contemporaine n’est pas l’outil idéal pour traiter de fiction didactique, ou pour évaluer une littérature nouvelle et différente. Appliquer les critères et les méthodes auxquels nous sommes habitués ne peut mener qu’à trois résultats : le rejet de toute science-fiction comme n’étant pas de la littérature, une préférence pour certains genres restreints de science-fiction (parce qu’on peut les comprendre au moins partiellement selon la manière habituelle, ou une conception et une perception erronées des textes que l’on essaie précisément de comprendre. La troisième catégorie est restée rare jusqu’ici, parce que l’intérêt universitaire pour la science-fiction était rare, mais elle pourrait devenir bien trop courante si la popularité croissante des cours d’université sur ce sujet ne s’accompagne pas d’une critique adaptée à son sujet.

Social Robots, fiction, and sentimentality

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rodogno, Raffaele

2016-01-01

in the philosophy of art and in cognitive science that attempts to solve the so called paradox of fictional emotions, i.e., the seemingly paradoxical way in which we respond emotionally to fictional or imaginary characters and events. If sentimentality were not at issue, neither would its immorality. For the sake...... argue that there are other reasons to be worried about the wide-spread use of ersatz companionship technology that have to do with the potential loss of valuable, self-defining forms of life....

The Role of Fiction in Experiments within Design, Art & Architecture

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Knutz, Eva; Markussen, Thomas; Christensen, Poul Rind

2013-01-01

This paper offers a typology for understanding design fiction as a new approach in design research. The typology allows design researchers to explain design fictions according to 5 criteria: (1) “What if scenarios” as the basic construal principle of design fiction; (2) the manifestation of criti...

Preschoolers can infer general rules governing fantastical events in fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Van de Vondervoort, Julia W; Friedman, Ori

2014-05-01

Young children are frequently exposed to fantastic fiction. How do they make sense of the unrealistic and impossible events that occur in such fiction? Although children could view such events as isolated episodes, the present experiments suggest that children use such events to infer general fantasy rules. In 2 experiments, 2- to 4-year-olds were shown scenarios in which 2 animals behaved unrealistically (N = 78 in Experiment 1, N = 94 in Experiment 2). When asked to predict how other animals in the fiction would behave, children predicted novel behaviors consistent with the nature of the fiction. These findings suggest that preschoolers can infer the general rules that govern the events and entities in fantastic fiction and can use these rules to predict what events will happen in the fiction. The findings also provide evidence that children may infer fantasy rules at a more superordinate level than the basic level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Medical thrillers: doctored fiction for future doctors?

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Charpy, Jean-Pierre

2014-12-01

Medical thrillers have been a mainstay of popular fiction since the late 1970s and still attract a wide readership today. This article examines this specialized genre and its core conventions within the context of professionally-based fiction, i.e. the class of thrillers written by professionals or former professionals. The author maps this largely unchartered territory and analyzes the fictional representations of doctors and medicine provided in such novels. He argues that medical thrillers, which are not originally aimed at specialized readers and sometimes project a flawed image of medicine, may be used as a pedagogical tool with non-native learners of medical English.

Teaching English and History through Historical Fiction.

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Hicks, Alun; Martin, Dave

1997-01-01

Explores the appeal of historical fiction for young readers and describes its place within any school curriculum. Describes a project in Dorset Middle Schools which used historical fiction to teach medieval history and English. Notes that students' historical thinking was improved, their knowledge of medieval world advanced, and their writing was…

Strategies for Improving Non-Fiction Reading Comprehension.

Science.gov (United States)

Bell, Karen; Caspari, Amy

This report describes a program for introducing students to strategies for improving their comprehension of non-fiction materials. The targeted population consisted of students of one third grade class in a small, middle class suburb, northwest of a large, midwestern city. Difficulty reading and comprehending non-fiction material was documented…

[Asperger syndrome in contemporary fictions].

Science.gov (United States)

Pourre, F; Aubert, E; Andanson, J; Raynaud, J-P

2012-12-01

During recent years, fictions featuring a character with Asperger syndrome have been increasingly produced in literature, cinema and TV. Thus, the public has gradually discovered the existence of this specific category of autism spectrum, which is far removed from old popular representations of autistic disorders, often associated with mental retardation. To describe the reactions generated by these characters in order to identify their major functions and also to try to explain their recent increase in fictions. First, we explored international publications concerning this topic. A group of experienced clinicians systematically examined works of fiction produced between 2000 and 2010 that included a character with Asperger syndrome. More than 30 productions have been identified and analyzed using a method adapted from focus group. Over 30 productions have been recorded and analyzed. The reactions generated by these characters are described. They range from fascination to empathy; if these heroes sometimes induce laughter (because of comedy situations), they also lead us to question our vision of the world and ask ourselves about notions such as difference, normality and tolerance. We illustrate this phenomenon with examples from literature, cinema or television. Four hypotheses are proposed trying to explain the recent multiplication of these fictional characters with Asperger syndrome. The first puts forward authors' informative and educational motivations, these authors being aware of this issue. The second is supported by the "hero" concept, which has evolved gradually into the figures of the scientific world and the so-called "Geek" community. The third hypothesis, a metaphorical one, considers these heroes as symbols of a future society: a hyper systematized society, devoid of empathy, as if to warn of a risk of evolution of humanity toward a generalized mental blindness. The fourth and last hypothesis explores the personal resonance, supported by

The Role of Fiction in Experiments within Design, Art & Architecture

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Knutz, Eva; Markussen, Thomas; Christensen, Poul Rind

2014-01-01

This paper offers a typology for understanding design fiction as a new approach in design research. The typology allows design researchers to explain design fictions according to 5 criteria.The typology is premised on the idea that fiction may integrate with reality in many different ways in design...

Belaboring the Maritime Novel: The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, Sea Fiction, and Constituent Power

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Brandon Jernigan

2017-09-01

Full Text Available In this article, I argue that Joseph Conrad’s revision of popular maritime fiction in 'The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’' (1897 stages the anachronistic nature of romantic adventure in modernity in order to recuperate its own recognition of the revolutionary capacity of the body and collective labor. Throughout his work, Conrad participates in a range of popular genres, often engaging with, and drawing on, multiple genres in the space of a single novel. His formal flexibility at least partially accounts for his complex critical legacy as a writer who exposes the imperialist ideology in which he participates. 'The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’', however, demands that we partially amend our notion of Conrad’s deconstructive aesthetic. This approach helps to clarify how the novella engages in critical self-reflection as it reveals the fragile constructedness of both genre and history. In adapting the genre of sea fiction, Conrad places pressure on extant tensions within the genre, especially around labor, and nearly renders the romantic adventure untenable. However, this pressure ultimately becomes an adaptive strategy to confront growing anxiety around imperial interdependency, including the rejection of commodified labor. At a moment in imperial history when the recognition of global interdependence and antagonism threatens the ideological, economic, and political underpinnings of imperialism, Conrad adapts the flexibility of sea fiction to confront this mounting pressure on the imperial consciousness and thus to reconstruct a more flexible representation of imperial relations.

Online Fan Fiction and Critical Media Literacy

Science.gov (United States)

Black, Rebecca W.

2010-01-01

This article explores English-language-learning (ELL) youths' engagement with popular media through composing and publicly posting stories in an online fan fiction writing space. Fan fiction is a genre that lends itself to critical engagement with media texts as fans repurpose popular media to design their own narratives. Analyses describe how…

Graham Greene: The Films of His Fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Phillips, Gene D.

This book makes a comparative study of the prose fiction of Graham Greene and the films made from that fiction. Special attention is focused upon the "cinematic" style of Greene's prose, the effect of Greene's screenwriting on his novels, and the characteristics of Greene's filmscripts. The book is divided into considerations of Greene…

Fiction series in TVE between 1956 and 1989

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Elvira Canós Cerdá

2016-05-01

Full Text Available The change in the Spanish television landscape resulting from the loss of the monopoly of RTVE and the landing of private regional television and national channels, created a new context marked by competition between different private channels. In this scenario, there was a confluence of several factors that led to the launch of the national fiction production in our own country from the hands of a renewal of the genre with new creative and production systems (García de Castro, 2008:150. All this contrasts with the existence of certain gaps in research on the Spanish television fiction in years for the TVE television monopoly, as pioneer of today's fiction. Therefore, the presence of in-depth studies to clarify the trajectory of a fiction that will lay the foundation for self-produced fiction in Spain is necessary. This paper has as general objective an approach to the birth and evolution of serial fiction formats in TVE until the advent of private television, and the study of its distinctive features. This research can be understood under the phenomenological paradigm and is located within the television studies that focus specifically on the textual historicism (Ellis, 2007, in which the text is studied in relation to its historical context taking into account the influence of the period which the program was carried out when studying its meaning. It will be approached with a methodological pluralism that combines the qualitative method and historical method. The main technique used is the documentary observation of primary sources; mainly TV programs from the studied period. From the study of a significant sample of fiction programs produced and broadcast by Spanish public TV we can identify the traits that characterize them. Some of them still remain in the current TV series and another traits have been evolving in time.

“They All Lived Happily Ever After. Obviously.”: Realism and Utopia in Game of Thrones-Based Alternate Universe Fairy Tale Fan Fiction

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Anne Kustritz

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Fan fiction alternate universe stories (AUs that combine Game of Thrones characters and settings with fairy tale elements construct a dialogue between realism and wonder. Realism performs a number of functions in various genres, but becomes a particularly tricky concept to tie down in fantasy. Deployments of realism in “quality TV” series like Game of Thrones often reinforce social stigmatization of feminine genres like the romance, melodrama, and fairy tale. The happily-ever-after ending receives significant feminist criticism partly because it falls within a larger framework of utopian politics and poetics, which are frequently accused of essentialism and authoritarianism. However, because fan fiction cultures place all stories in dialogue with numerous other equally plausible versions, the fairy tale happy ending can serve unexpected purposes. By examining several case studies in fairy tale AU fan fiction based on Game of Thrones characters, situations, and settings, this paper demonstrates the genre’s ability to construct surprising critiques of real social and historical situations through strategic deployment of impossible wishes made manifest through the magic of fan creativity.

TOWARDS A SEMANTICS FOR THE ARTIFACTUAL THEORY OF FICTION AND BEYOND

OpenAIRE

Fontaine , M; Rahman , Shahid

2014-01-01

International audience; In her book Fiction and Metaphysics [1999] Amie Thomasson, influenced by the work of Roman Ingarden, develops a phenomenological approach to fictional entities in order to explain how non-fictional entities can be referred to intrafictionally and transfictionally, for example in the context of literary interpretation. As our starting point we take Thomasson's realist theory of literary fictional objects, according to which such objects actually exist, albeit as abstrac...

Using Fan Fiction to Teach Critical Reading and Writing Skills

Science.gov (United States)

Kell, Tracey

2009-01-01

In this article, the author talks about fan fiction, which is defined by Jenkins (2008) as "original stories and novels which are set in the fictional universe of favorite television series, films, comics, games or other media properties." Fan fiction generally involves writing stories with a combination of established characters and established…

Commodification of culture in fiction-induced tourism

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Lipovšek Emilija

2015-01-01

Full Text Available In the fiction-induced tourism, the illusion of the fictional world is maintained for the sake of the tourist in the real locations and thus it can be used to attract readership and cinephiles alike. Their desire to travel is based on the chronotope (Bakhtin, 1981 that is used as the background in their favourite books and films. Upon reading a book or seeing a film, the audience is inspired to visit the locations in a city where the plot took place. Thus the chronotope of the city featured in fiction develops palimpsestic features. If the flâneur experiences the city, its streets and inhabitants as he/she wanders aimlessly and translates afterwards all this into words in the urban narrative (Benjamin, 1968, then the tourist acts as a 'flâneur ranversé', while they walk the city and observe it in search of the places described in their favourite works of fiction. Moreover, the paper will consider some of the examples of the commodification of cultural products, including Harry Potter bookshop, guided walks and themed studio tours.

Modifiable futures: science fiction at the bench.

Science.gov (United States)

Milburn, Colin

2010-09-01

Science fiction remains an alien dimension of the history of science. Historical and literary studies of science have become increasingly attentive to various "literary technologies" in scientific practice, the metaphorical features of scientific discourse, and the impact of popular science writing on the social development of scientific knowledge. But the function of science fiction and even literature as such in the history of scientific and technological innovation has often been obscured, misconstrued, or repudiated owing to conventional notions of authorship, influence, and the organic unity of texts. The better to address those close encounters where scientific practice makes use of speculative fiction, this essay proposes that we instead analyze such exchanges as processes of appropriation, remixing, and modification.

Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind.

Science.gov (United States)

Kidd, David Comer; Castano, Emanuele

2013-10-18

Understanding others' mental states is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human societies. Yet little research has investigated what fosters this skill, which is known as Theory of Mind (ToM), in adults. We present five experiments showing that reading literary fiction led to better performance on tests of affective ToM (experiments 1 to 5) and cognitive ToM (experiments 4 and 5) compared with reading nonfiction (experiments 1), popular fiction (experiments 2 to 5), or nothing at all (experiments 2 and 5). Specifically, these results show that reading literary fiction temporarily enhances ToM. More broadly, they suggest that ToM may be influenced by engagement with works of art.

Taming the Alien Genre: Bringing Science Fiction into the Classroom.

Science.gov (United States)

Bucher, Kathrine T.; Manning, M. Lee

2001-01-01

Notes the popularity of the science fiction/fantasy genre, and offers a definition of these genres. Discusses teachers' reluctance to read or teach science fiction, but emphasizes its appeal and its usefulness. Discusses how teachers can select and use good science fiction books. Offers a checklist for evaluating such books, and suggests 18…

The Affordances of Fiction for Teaching Chemistry

Science.gov (United States)

Yerrick, Randy K.; Simons, Tiffany

2017-01-01

As science fiction has a way of capturing the human imagination that few other genres can rival, this study sought to investigate the effects of using science fiction on the performance and interest of high school chemistry students. An action research approach was used to guide the first author's practice as she studied two college preparatory…

On the Teaching of Science, Technology and International Affairs.

Science.gov (United States)

Weiss, Charles

2012-03-01

Despite the ubiquity and critical importance of science and technology in international affairs, their role receives insufficient attention in traditional international relations curricula. There is little literature on how the relations between science, technology, economics, politics, law and culture should be taught in an international context. Since it is impossible even for scientists to master all the branches of natural science and engineering that affect public policy, the learning goals of students whose primary training is in the social sciences should be to get some grounding in the natural sciences or engineering, to master basic policy skills, to understand the basic concepts that link science and technology to their broader context, and to gain a respect for the scientific and technological dimensions of the broader issues they are addressing. They also need to cultivate a fearless determination to master what they need to know in order to address policy issues, an open-minded but skeptical attitude towards the views of dueling experts, regardless of whether they agree with their politics, and (for American students) a world-view that goes beyond a strictly U.S. perspective on international events. The Georgetown University program in Science, Technology and International Affairs (STIA) is a unique, multi-disciplinary undergraduate liberal arts program that embodies this approach and could be an example that other institutions of higher learning might adapt to their own requirements.

Teaching Evolution with the Aid of Science Fiction

Science.gov (United States)

Bixler, Andrea

2007-01-01

Students obtain much misinformation from TV and movies. Teachers can use the analysis of science fiction to correct misconceptions about biology and spur students' interests in the subject. Suggestions for discussions and assignments based on literary-quality science fiction works are included.

International Framework and Japan’s Pursuit of Being A Major Political Power

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Meng Xiaoxu

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The boom of post-war Japan is deeply affected by the international framework when choosing the development path of the state. The bipolar architecture of the Cold War has made Japan a sovereign state again with the support of the United States. Within the Cold War framework, Japan has come up with the goal of being a political power based on its economic strength. After the end of Cold War, multipolar architecture has become the main trend in the world, and Japan has regarded this trend as its opportunity to realize its political dream, expecting to be more involved in world affairs as well as taking responsibilities within the international order and economic system. Meanwhile, Japan has also made a breakthrough within military power and used this to become a political power. Entering the 21st century, the multipolar architecture has deepened, while emerging nations have risen sharply collectively. Japan has speeded up the process of pursuing a political path accordingly, enhancing its leadership and influence in the regional economy, revising peace constitution to breakthrough military shackles, playing a role in counter-terrorism affairs and international organizations, thus making its dream of being a political power come true. Nevertheless, Japan has faced obstacles both at home and abroad.

Stranger than fiction

CERN Document Server

2007-01-01

Is the universe - correction: 'our' universe - no more than a speck of cosmic dust amid an infinite number of parallel worlds? A staple of mind-bending science fiction, the possibility of multiple universes has long intrigued hard-nosed physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists too.

Science Fiction at the Far Side of Technology

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Johansen, Mikkel Willum

2017-01-01

This book explores what science fiction can tell us about the human condition in a technological world (with the dilemma's and consequences that this entails) and also engages with the genre at points where we apparently find it on the far side of science, technology or human existence. As such....... It is our hope that this interdisciplinary approach will set an example for those who, like us, have been busy assessing the ways in which fictional attempts to fathom the possibilities of science and technology speak to central concerns about what it means to be human in a contemporary world of technology....... Although a scholarly work, this book is also designed to be accessible to a general audience that has an interest in science fiction as well as a broader academic audience. Aspiring (or experienced) science fiction writers may be interested in reading critical assessments of the science and technology...

Science Fiction at the Far Side of Technology

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Johansen, Mikkel Willum

2017-01-01

This book explores what science fiction can tell us about the human condition in a technological world (with the dilemma's and consequences that this entails) and also engages with the genre at points where we apparently find it on the far side of science, technology or human existence. As such......, it is the result of the joint efforts of scholars and scientists from various disciplines. While some of the contributors to this volume have been working professionally with science fiction for some time, others are newcomers who bring perspectives from their own field of specialization to the study of this genre....... Although a scholarly work, this book is also designed to be accessible to a general audience that has an interest in science fiction as well as a broader academic audience. Aspiring (or experienced) science fiction writers may be interested in reading critical assessments of the science and technology...

To Work or Play? Junior Age Non-Fiction as Objects of Design.

Science.gov (United States)

Moss, Gemma

2001-01-01

Examines change and variation in the design of non-fiction texts which have a junior-age readership. Argues that different forms of presentation of non-fiction offer different ways of reading non-fiction texts, which as yet are neither fully described nor recognized. Suggests that non-fiction texts can be more or less firmly orientated towards…

25 CFR 11.427 - Threats and other improper influence in official and political matters.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... political matters. 11.427 Section 11.427 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAW AND ORDER COURTS OF INDIAN OFFENSES AND LAW AND ORDER CODE Criminal Offenses § 11.427 Threats and other improper influence in official and political matters. (a) A person commits a misdemeanor if he or...

78 FR 13897 - Bureau of International Labor Affairs; Office of Trade and Labor Affairs; Labor Affairs Council...

Science.gov (United States)

2013-03-01

... Public Session Meeting AGENCY: International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB), U.S. Department of Labor.... Department of Labor gives notice of the public session of the meeting of the Labor Affairs Council (``Council... DEPARTMENT OF LABOR Office of the Secretary Bureau of International Labor Affairs; Office of Trade...

Auto-fictional narratives about death in the family

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Frølunde, Lisbeth

2017-01-01

What are the interrelations of fiction-based and non-fiction based research? In this presentation I explore these interrelations through researching, retracing, and writing about my father’s suicide. In tandem, I consider the methodological issues of using narratives – that they enable a reader...

Rocketry, film and fiction: the road to Sputnik

Science.gov (United States)

Brake, Mark; Hook, Neil

2007-07-01

The launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 was fuelled by science fiction as well as science fact. The field of early rocketry included the work of Russians Nikolai Rynin and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, American Robert Goddard, and German engineers Herman Oberth and Wernher Von Braun. All were directly inspired and influenced by early science fiction that heralded a space age decades ahead of time. The work of these pioneers led directly to the development of the technology needed to boost Sputnik skyward. After the launch of Sputnik, the context of the nuclear arms race opened the floodgates for a new wave of apocalyptic fiction.

Fictional Inquiry

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dindler, Christian; Iversen, Ole Sejer

At designe i en fortællemæssig ramme giver brugere og designere mulighed for i fællesskab at udforske fremtidens it-anvendelser. Metoden hedder Fictional Inquiry, og den motiverer brugerne til at tænke ud over dagligdagens begrænsninger og sætte ord på ting i hverdagen, som ellers er svære...

The Double Helix: Why Science Needs Science Fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Andreadis, Athena

2003-01-01

Discusses why science needs science fiction, commenting on the author's book about science that draws heavily on the "Star Trek" series. The best science, in spite of popular thinking, comes from leaps of intuition, and science fiction provides a creative spark that encourages participation in science. (SLD)

Topos of the cosmic space in science fiction

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Poutilo Oleg Olegovich

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The article examines the forms of cosmic space in science fiction, its characteristics and main trends of evolution. Cosmic space is seen as a dichotomy of “our” and “their”, though their interaction is complicated and full interiorization is impossible. The specificity of the described cosmic space is the absence of the traditional system of coordinates associated with the sides of the world. Authors have to resort to the use of “map-route”, describing the journey sequentially, from the point of view of a moving person. In this regard, in recent years there has been a tendency to reduce the role of images of cosmic space in science fiction novels. Their appearance in the works becomes a kind of stamp, a concession to the classical traditions of the genre. Once popular genres of strict science fiction or space opera inferior position to the other, recreating a far more convincing picture of the probable future of humanity - cyberpunk dystopia and post-apocalyptic fiction.

Discovery Mondays: 'Separating science from fiction'

CERN Multimedia

2006-01-01

Photo credit: ESA/NASA, the AVO project and Paolo PadovaniDoes the imaginary word of fiction always end up becoming scientific reality? What futuristic visions can we extrapolate from today's technologies? Here is a short quiz to test your knowledge. Can YOU tell truth from fiction? True False The laser swords featuring in the Star Wars films really exist. Time travel is possible using black holes. You could eat a cake of antimatter. Levitation vehicles really exist. Dan Brown is a space alien. How can you distinguish truth from fiction, dreams from reality, real science and technology from the sci-fi fantasies so realistically described in novels, television and cinema? You are invited to come and discuss these questions at a Discovery Monday at the very frontiers of science..... Join us at Microcosm (Reception, Building 33, Meyrin site), on Monday, 4 September from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Entrance Free The event will be conducted in French. http://www.cern.ch/LundisDecouverte/ ...

Fiction as Reconstruction of History: Narratives of the Civil War in American Literature

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Reinhard Isensee

2009-09-01

Full Text Available Even after more than 140 years the American Civil War continues to serve as a major source of inspiration for a plethora of literature in various genres. While only amounting to a brief period in American history in terms of years, this war has proved to be one of the central moments for defining the American nation since the second half of the nineteenth century. The facets of the Civil War, its protagonists, places, events, and political, social and cultural underpinnings seem to hold an ongoing fascination for both academic studies and fictional representations. Thus, it has been considered by many the most written-about war in the United States.

Le style modal de la science-fiction

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Emmanuel Boisset

2013-04-01

Full Text Available La faiblesse de style dont souffrirait la science-fiction est en fait le signe que la science y est davantage discours du possible que description du réel. Un « style modal » va suspendre la valeur de vérité, et le style de la possibilité va décontextualiser les métaphores disponibles. En science-fiction, le processus métaphorique génère et structure la diégèse. Un exemple chez Iain M. Banks montre un dialogue quasi incompréhensible mettre à l’épreuve la signification comme possibilité. Les métaphores figées sont revitalisées par la décontextualisation de la fiction, dont le texte peut exploiter l’impertinence.

Science Fiction and Life after Death

OpenAIRE

Burt, Stephen Louis

2014-01-01

Science fiction (SF) is, and has been since its inception as a self-conscious genre, centrally and persistently interested in presenting some version of or figure for an afterlife, some way to survive the death of the body, some place where our consciousness might live on after we die. We can find representations of an afterlife within every period of SF properly so-called, from late-nineteenth-century “scientific romance” to Campbellian magazine fiction, to the New Wave of the 1960s, to the ...

Shakespeare’s Eternal Voice: Fictional autobiographies of the Bard

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Tomasz Kowalski

2017-11-01

Full Text Available The paper focuses on two fictional works that strive to revive Shakespeare's voice, that is Christopher Rush's "Will" (2007, and J. P. Wearing's ÒThe Shakespeare's Diaries: A Fictional Autobiography" (2007, which although significantly different in terms of form find common ground in employing the first-person narrative in order to depict Shakespeare's life. The author analyses the image of the Bard that emerges from the novel and the diary, and the way in which both works transform the facts known from certain documents or based on extensive research into a fictional narrative. He argues that although both works try to satisfy the curiosity of the readers, they belong to two different types of representations found in fictional biographies of the Bard, and therefore the images they create address different kinds of collective desires and fantasies of the mass audience.

Thomas Hardy's Victorian Gothic: Reassessing Hardy's Fiction and His Gothic Sensibility.

Science.gov (United States)

Goldstein, Norma Walrath

Proposing that Thomas Hardy's fiction exhibits strong Gothic sensibilities which offer insight into his artistic vision and add to the power of his fiction, creating a new form of the Gothic, a Victorian Gothic, this dissertation reassesses the Gothic strains in Hardy's fiction. The dissertation is in eight chapters: (1) Introduction to Hardy's…

Science Fiction Exhibits as STEM Gateways

Science.gov (United States)

Robie, Samantha

Women continue to hold less than a quarter of all STEM jobs in the United States, prompting many museums to develop programs and exhibits with the express goal of interesting young girls in scientific fields. At the same time, a number of recent museum exhibits have harnessed the popularity of pop culture and science fiction in order to interest general audiences in STEM subject matter, as well as using the exhibits as springboards to expand or shift mission goals and focus. Because science fiction appears to be successful at raising interest in STEM fields, it may be an effective way to garner the interest of young girls in STEM in particular. This research seeks to describe the ways in which museums are currently using science fiction exhibits to interest young girls in STEM fields and careers. Research focused on four institutions across the country hosting three separate exhibits, and included staff interviews and content analysis of exhibit descriptions, promotional materials, a summative evaluation and supplementary exhibit productions. In some ways, science fiction exhibits do serve young girls, primarily through the inclusion of female role models, staff awareness, and prototype testing to ensure interactives are attractive to girls as well as to boys. However, STEM appears to be underutilized, which may be partly due to a concern within the field that the outcome of targeting a specific gender could be construed as "stereotyping".

Political Chaos: The Sense of Martial Danger in Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"

Science.gov (United States)

Jubouri Al-Ogaili, Thamer Amer; Babaee, Ruzbeh

2016-01-01

This study focuses on the political chaos in Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" (1963). While the main scholarly studies focus on the postcolonial peculiarities of the novel, this study will focus on the post-nuclear characteristics and will render the novel's position distinctive within the discourse on political and social affairs. The…

Public affairs plan

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1995-09-01

The purpose of the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project Public Affairs Plan is to establish goals for the fiscal year (FY) 1996 UMTRA Project public affairs program and to identify specific activities to be conducted during the year. It describes the roles of various agencies involved in the public affairs program and defines the functions of the UMTRA Project Technical Assistance Contractor (TAC) Public Affairs Department. It replaces the FY 1995 Public Affairs Plan (DOE/AL/62350-154). The plan also describes the US Department of Energy's (DOE) plans to keep stakeholders and other members of the public informed about UMTRA Project policies, plans, and activities, and provide opportunities for stakeholders and interested segments of the public to participate in UMTRA Project decision-making processes. The plan applies to the UMTRA Project Team; the DOE Grand Junction Projects Office (GJPO); the DOE Albuquerque Operations Office, Office of Public Affairs (OPA); the TAC; the UMTRA Project Remedial Action Contractor (RAC); and other cooperating agencies

Fiction as an Introduction to Computer Science Research

Science.gov (United States)

Goldsmith, Judy; Mattei, Nicholas

2014-01-01

The undergraduate computer science curriculum is generally focused on skills and tools; most students are not exposed to much research in the field, and do not learn how to navigate the research literature. We describe how fiction reviews (and specifically science fiction) are used as a gateway to research reviews. Students learn a little about…

Modern Science Fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Dailey, Jennie Ora Marriott

The major prerequisite to studying science fiction as literature is determining the criteria by which it is to be evaluated. A middle ground which recognizes both literary merit and the genre's uniqueness (scientific orientation, dominancy of idea, and interest of speculation) proves to be the most workable approach and stresses the versatility…

Does art imitate death? Depictions of suicide in fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Pridmore, Saxby; Walter, Garry

2013-02-01

To determine whether fiction (narrative products) deals with the issue of suicide and, if so, what it tells us about suicide "drivers". Accounts of suicide in narrative products were sought through web-based lists, book club members, other active readers and a prize-winning film writer and producer. Seventy-one depictions of fictional suicidal events were identified. In 12 suicides, the author appeared to indicate that the death was directly or indirectly due to mental disorder. In 15 suicides, the motivation could not be determined by the reader, and in 44 cases the motivation was social/situational factors. Suicidal events are depicted in fiction, and the features are broadly similar to the features of suicide in the real world. Should it be determined that cultural influences, including fiction, are important in suicide, any preventive activities aimed at modifying cultural influences will need to consider all forms of narrative product.

Murder by the book: using crime fiction as a bibliotherapeutic resource.

Science.gov (United States)

Brewster, Liz

2017-03-01

Crime is a popular genre of fiction, widely read but sometimes seen as 'throwaway'. Disregarding this type of fiction because it is seen as low quality does not take into account its value to readers. Reading has been established as a means of improving mental health and well-being-often known as bibliotherapy. This often focuses on fiction considered to have literary merit rather than genre fiction like crime. However, in framing therapeutic reading in this way, the impact of texts considered to have low cultural value such as crime has been concealed. Examining readers' responses as a starting point identifies some reasons why crime fiction fulfils a need. Readers in an empirical study spoke about the strong narrative as a distraction, the predictability as a comfort and the safe distance from events as a reassurance that left them feeling that reading crime fiction was a refuge from the world. In exploring readers' responses in relation to the academic literature, the paper argues that there is a need to think differently about how readers engage with texts and how they experience reading as therapeutic, with a role for fiction like crime. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

Analytical Approach to Fictional Elements of Sandbadnameh

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a عارفی

2014-05-01

Using stock and allegorical characters, fixed tone and style in dialogue tales, lack of variegated plot and logical and stable relationship between events make this work far from contemporary criteria of fiction writing in spite of its great volume, and introduce it as a symbolic and allegorical tale. On the other hand, bombastic and embellished prose as well as being loyal to ancient fiction writing have added to literary significance of this literary work.

China Report: Political, Sociological and Military Affairs, No. 470.

Science.gov (United States)

1983-11-07

legislation if it was passed by the Senate. At a press conference today, when he was asked why had he changed his mind, he said it was "of great...force in the political sphere. Therefore, with the election year approaching the legislation concerning Martin Luther King has become a sensitive...the fifth round today they will be armed with a brief from the prime minister. Senior sources at Westminister say Mrs Thatcher is now looking to Hong

Depictions of global environmental change in science fiction : an overview of educational applications

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kadonaga, L. [Victoria Univ., BC (Canada). Dept. of Geography

2000-06-01

This paper examined how the use of science fiction books and movies can be used as a tool to educate the public. Narratives encourage interest in global environmental changes and can help demystify how science works. Although most science fiction depictions of global environmental change are outdated and oversimplified, the genre can encourage discussion of ecological and social impacts. Writers of science fiction consider both natural systems and human societies, anticipating the work of impacts researchers. It was argued that while both science fiction writers and global change researchers require knowledge and creativity to construct realistic extrapolations, a well-written science fiction book is likely to reach a larger audience. Science fiction books emphasize that climate projections are intended as warnings. If properly handled, they can improve public awareness of issues such as global warming and climatic change. It was suggested that collaboration between researchers and science fiction writers could produce some interesting work. 48 refs.

‘Every age gets the art it deserves’ ‐ science fiction : history, background and definitions

OpenAIRE

Grech, Victor E.; Vassallo, Clare; Callus, Ivan

2012-01-01

It would be logical to commence this essay by attempting to identify the approximate locus of SF within the general corpus of literature as perceived by the academy. Fiction might here be seen as having four main categories: canonical fiction (the classics), serious fiction that strives to become canonical, plain fiction (best sellers or general works) and junk fiction: popular and gauche fiction that includes mysteries, thrillers, westerns, romances, fantasy, and SF. It has been argued that ...

The Use of "Literary Fiction" to Promote Mentalizing Ability.

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Pino, Maria Chiara; Mazza, Monica

2016-01-01

Empathy is a multidimensional process that incorporates both mentalizing and emotional sharing dimensions. Empathic competencies are important for creating interpersonal relationships with other people and developing adequate social behaviour. The lack of these social components also leads to isolation and exclusion in healthy populations. However, few studies have investigated how to improve these social skills. In a recent study, Kidd and Castano (2013) found that reading literary fiction increases mentalizing ability and may change how people think about other people's emotions and mental states. The aim of our study was to evaluate the effects of reading literary fiction, compared to nonfiction and science fiction, on empathic abilities. Compared to previous studies, we used a larger variety of empathy measures and utilized a pre and post-test design. In all, 214 healthy participants were randomly assigned to read a book representative of one of three literary genres (literary fiction, nonfiction, science fiction). Participants were assessed before and after the reading phase using mentalizing and emotional sharing tests, according to Zaki and Ochsner' s (2012) model. Comparisons of sociodemographic, mentalizing, and emotional sharing variables across conditions were conducted using ANOVA. Our results showed that after the reading phase, the literary fiction group showed improvement in mentalizing abilities, but there was no discernible effect on emotional sharing abilities. Our study showed that the reading processes can promote mentalizing abilities. These results may set important goals for future low-cost rehabilitation protocols for several disorders in which the mentalizing deficit is considered central to the disease, such as Autism Spectrum Disorders and Schizophrenia.

Teaching and Learning Psychology through an Analysis of Social Science Fiction

Science.gov (United States)

Herman, William E.

2009-01-01

This paper is designed to accompany an appearance by the author as a panelist during a session on science fiction and teaching methods at the I-CON 28 Science Fiction Convention held April 3-5, 2009, on Long Island (near New York City). The author describes how he employs social science fiction in an honors course at the university level to…

Antagonist Characters in the Early Gothic Novel: A Matter Of Political Anxiety? = Erken Dönem Gotik Romanlarında Karşıt Karakterler

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Christopher Thomas CAIRNEY

2001-01-01

Full Text Available During the eighteenth-century, the antagonist, previously the second most important character in a story, becomes, first in Richardson's Clarissa, and then under Gothic influence, the main character in the novel. This recalls the “heavy” villain of Elizabethan drama. The use to which the character is put by the author is both consciously and unconsciously political or ideological, at least in part. Under political influence, the antagonist can be classified as either “repentant” or “unrepentant,” with very different effects, as a New Historicist or Cultural Materialist analysis can reveal. The Gothic antagonist is set within the Gothic novel, and together with other conventions of the Gothic novel became the basis of later interpretations of the Gothic impulse in novels of various sub-genres, from oriental fiction and science fiction to the modern romance novel.

Screen Present and Fictional Present

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Robin Le Poidevin

Full Text Available ABSTRACT I intend in this paper to explore the possible consequences for our understanding of fiction of a particular view of the nature of time, namely the hypothesis of the open future. The kind of fiction we will particularly concerned with is film, which provides a convenient way of focusing the general issue I want to raise here. The issue could also be raised in relation to theatre and certain types of novel, but there are nevertheless some disanalogies between film and these other art forms, and I shall indicate these below. The essay is intended as an exercise in bringing metaphysics and aesthetics together, to the benefit (I hope and trust of both.

French Fiction, Empathy, and the Utopian Potential of 9/11

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Tim Gauthier

2013-01-01

Full Text Available In From Solidarity to Schisms , Cara Cilano conceptualizes September 11 as a moment “characterized by unfathomable vulnerability and the possibility of a better future.” She argues the event, while traumatic, might have served as an impetus to reconfigure American self-perceptions and thoughts about its place in the world. Instead, she contends, the United States squandered the utopian potential of this moment. Cilano remains optimistic, however, because she sees European fictional discourse on 9/11 as emblematic of a desire for a melding of divergent perspectives. Their critique aims to keep America’s sense of itself unbalanced, thus providing fuel for self-reflection, analysis, and, most important, renewal. Taking the measure of current Franco-American relations, this essay tests the validity of this contention by examining works of French fiction published in the five years after the attacks. Four of these texts—Christian Garcin’s La jubilation des hasards , Didier Goupil’s Le jour de mon retour sur terre , Luc Lang’s 11 septembre, mon amour , and Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World —will be the focus of this essay. Are they being written to take advantage of the cosmopolitan potential of the moment, or grasping the opportunity to criticize a (weakened nation, and thereby expressing uniquely French concerns? The essay contemplates the extent to which self-interest and questions of identity—personal, political, national—interfere with empathy, thus posing a considerable challenge to the utopian dream of a cosmopolitan world.

Ethnicity and State Politics in Africa | Nzongola-Ntalaja | African ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

African Journal of International Affairs. Journal Home · ABOUT THIS JOURNAL · Advanced Search · Current Issue · Archives · Journal Home > Vol 2, No 1 (1999) >. Log in or Register to get access to full text downloads. Username, Password, Remember me, or Register. Ethnicity and State Politics in Africa. Georges ...

Visionary medicine: speculative fiction, racial justice and Octavia Butler's 'Bloodchild'.

Science.gov (United States)

Pasco, John Carlo; Anderson, Camille; DasGupta, Sayantani

2016-12-01

Medical students across the USA have increasingly made the medical institution a place for speculating racially just futures. From die-ins in Fall 2014 to silent protests in response to racially motivated police brutality, medical schools have responded to the public health crisis that is racial injustice in the USA. Reading science fiction may benefit healthcare practitioners who are already invested in imagining a more just, healthier futurity. Fiction that rewrites the future in ways that undermine contemporary power regimes has been termed 'visionary fiction'. In this paper, the authors introduce 'visionary medicine' as a tool for teaching medical students to imagine and produce futures that preserve health and racial justice for all. This essay establishes the connections between racial justice, medicine and speculative fiction by examining medicine's racially unjust past practices, and the intersections of racial justice and traditional science and speculative fiction. It then examines speculative fiction author Octavia Butler's short story 'Bloodchild' as a text that can introduce students of the medical humanities to a liberatory imagining of health and embodiment, one that does not reify and reinscribe boundaries of difference, but reimagines the nature of Self and Other, power and collaboration, agency and justice. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

Authentication Projects for Historical Fiction: Do You Believe It?

Science.gov (United States)

McTigue, Erin; Thornton, Elaine; Wiese, Patricia

2013-01-01

Authentication projects, particularly for historical fiction, provide a means for students to explore literature and history while practicing critical literacy skills. The authors 1) present benefits and cautions for historical fiction use in elementary classrooms, 2) introduce authentication projects as a means to mitigate risks and enhance…

THE VECTOR OF METODOLOGY IN FICTION STUDIES

OpenAIRE

GOLBAN, PETRU

2015-01-01

This study considers fiction, its certain characteristic features, principles and devices (thematic and narrative), and a number of structural elements correlated within interpretative models. The purpose of this study represents the attempt to establish a vector of methodology, i. e. an interpretative modality aimed at stipulating the direction of approach to the fictional text, and which consists of a set of methods, an ordered system of principles of research used for study in the field of...

Fiction and Religion: How Narratives About the Supernatural Inspire Religious Belief

OpenAIRE

Davidsen, M.A.

2016-01-01

Thematic issue on 'Fiction and Religion: How Narratives About the Supernatural Inspire Religious Belief', volume 46(4) of Religion. The thematic issue inclues the following articles: Davidsen, Markus Altena, "Fiction and Religion: How Narratives About the Supernatural Inspire Religious Belief – Introducing the Thematic Issue". Petersen, Anders Klostergaard, "The Difference Between Religious Narratives and Fictional Literature: A Matter of Degree Only". Davidsen, Markus Altena, "The Religious ...

Fan fiction, early Greece, and the historicity of canon

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Ahuvia Kahane

2016-03-01

Full Text Available The historicity of canon is considered with an emphasis on contemporary fan fiction and early Greek oral epic traditions. The essay explores the idea of canon by highlighting historical variance, exposing wider conceptual isomorphisms, and formulating a revised notion of canonicity. Based on an analysis of canon in early Greece, the discussion moves away from the idea of canon as a set of valued works and toward canon as a practice of containment in response to inherent states of surplus. This view of canon is applied to the practice of fan fiction, reestablishing the idea of canonicity in fluid production environments within a revised, historically specific understanding in early oral traditions on the one hand and in digital cultures and fan fiction on the other. Several examples of early epigraphic Greek texts embedded in oral environments are analyzed and assessed in terms of their implications for an understanding of fan fiction and its modern contexts.

Passionate Virtue: Conceptions of Medical Professionalism in Popular Romance Fiction.

Science.gov (United States)

Miller, Jessica

2015-01-01

Medical romance fiction is a subgenre of popular romance fiction that features medical professionals in their work environment. This essay explores the way professionalism is portrayed in popular medical romance fiction written during the early twenty-first century, a period of significant disruption in both the public image and self-understanding of organized medicine. I analyze a selection of contemporary medical romance novels, published between 2008 and 2012, demonstrating that medical romance fiction is a form of public intervention in apparently insular debates over medical professionalism. I conclude that they promote "nostalgic professionalism," a vision of physicians as a select group of highly educated, self-regulated experts who provide, with a caring and altruistic attitude, a vitally important service to society, while at the same time generating implicit critiques of it.

The logic of crime fiction genre in modern person’s consciousness

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G. O. Krapivnyk

2014-08-01

Full Text Available The author provides philosophical anthropological analysis of the logic of the crime fiction genre in the modern person’s consciousness. It was shown that detective texts convey hyper-orderliness, which compensates for the lack of systematization in real life, directly influences the recipient, setting the limits of personal freedom, and indirectly structures social order. The research assumes that classical crime fiction is related to the positivist philosophy, rationalism and scientific thinking, whereas the formula of the late Modern crime fiction stories is gradually getting more sophisticated, which reflects the evolution of the philosophical thinking on the whole. The special feature of the crime fiction genre logic is in the fact that available in crime fiction texts typical formal logical elements of a hypothesis, versions, evidence and contradiction are combined by the addressers with creative inspiration, intuition, true life, which are not the characteristics of pure science. The logic in the texts of the crime fiction genre helps a modern person to virtually build a system of universal philosophical and cultural values, applied by the society as its basis for social norms, rules and laws of any modern state. In addition, the specific logic of investigation encourages person’s everyday activities, since cultural reading enables a person not only to perceive but also to transfer and use the laws of logic, inherent in the crime fiction genre, in their professional activities, including research work.

Homophobia, heteronormativity, and slash fan fiction

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April S. Callis

2016-09-01

Full Text Available I analyze the relationship between homophobia/heteronormativity and slash fan fiction. Through reading and coding almost 6,000 pages of Kirk/Spock fan fiction written from 1978 to 2014, I illuminate shifts in how normative gender and sexuality are portrayed by K/S authors. Writers of K/S, while ostensibly writing about the 23rd century, consciously or unconsciously include cultural norms from the 20th and 21st centuries. Thus, slash becomes a lens through which readers can view a decrease in both homophobia and heteronormativity in US culture over the past several decades.

From the wizard to the doubter: Prototypes of scientists and engineers in fiction and non-fiction media aimed at Dutch children and teenagers

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gorp, B. van; Rommes, E.W.M.; Emons, P.A.A.

2014-01-01

The aim of this paper is to gain insight into the prototypical scientists as they appear in fiction and non-fiction media consumed by children and teenagers in the Netherlands. A qualitative-interpretive content analysis is used to identify seven prototypes and the associated characteristics in a

Relationships Between the Political Orientation of Superintendents and their Leader Behavior as Perceived by Subordinates

Science.gov (United States)

Null, Eldon J.; Smead, William H.

1971-01-01

In this study, statistical analyses indicated that certain dimensions of political belief, particularly Foreign Affairs and Nature of Man and Society, are related to certain dimensions of leader behavior. (Authors)

The role of science fiction within the fluidity of slipstream literature

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Janez Steble

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The paper explores the complex and contradictory role of science fiction in slipstream, the type of postmodern non-realistic literature situated between the fantastic genres and the mainstream literary fiction. Because of its unstable status of occupying an interstitial position between multiple literary conventions, the article first deals with an expansive terminology affiliated with slipstream and elucidates upon using a unified term for it. Avantpop, transrealism, and interstitial fiction all help us in understanding the vast postmodern horizon of slipstream. Furthermore, the slipstream's philosophy of cognitive dissonance in comparison to science fiction's is analysed to see the similarities and differences between them. The section is mainly concerned on expanding Darko Suvin's concept of cognition and viewing it as partially compatible with slipstream's estrangement techniques. The final part is focused on the exemplary slipstream novel Vurt by Jeff Noon, a perfect example of science fiction providing material, including latest post-Newtonian paradigms of science, for slipstream to mould it in its own fashion.

Dimensional expansions and shiftings: fan fiction and transmedia storytelling the the Fringeverse

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Mar Guerrero-Pico

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This article explores the characteristics of user-generated texts in fictional transmedia storytelling based on the fan fiction originating from FOX’s television series Fringe (2008-2013. A fan fiction (also known as fanfic or fic is a piece of writing in which the author recreates the setting, events and characters of a source text or canon. After reviewing fan theories and practices, the article focuses on three examples examples of Fringe fan fiction analysing them with a double-edged methodology that combines narrative semiotics and narratology. Based on the results we update a set of transmedia narrative strategies by adding dimensional expansion and shifting, and also redefine the different areas of the storyworld where fan fiction is set with special emphasis on alternate universe (AU scenarios.

Teaching the Future: On the Use of Science Fiction in English Language Learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Stockwell, Peter

2001-01-01

Outlines the features of "pulpstyle" and its continuing influence on later science fiction. Considers some science fiction texts that explicitly address language issues. These ideas are related to practical techniques of using science fiction in the language classroom. (Author/VWL)

Indexing Serialized Fiction: May the Force Be with You.

Science.gov (United States)

Barr, Melissa M.

The adult novel offers indexers an unusual opportunity to create a serialized fiction index. This research paper involved designing and creating a Character Index, Thesaurus, Glossary, and Abstract (with descriptors) for 21 novels based on the "Star Wars" movies. The novels are an unusual example of serialized fiction featuring main…

Gesturing beyond the Frame: Transnational Trauma and US War Fiction

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Ruth A. H. Lahti

2012-12-01

Full Text Available The convergent boundary between the fields of trauma theory and US war fiction has resulted in a narrow focus on the subjectivity of the American soldier in war fiction, which partly conditions American war fiction's privileging of the soldier-author. However, this focus on American soldiers does not adequately account for the essentially interactive nature of war trauma, and it elides the experiences of nurses and noncombatants on all sides of the battle while also obscuring women's distinctive war experiences, even when the fiction itself sometimes includes these dimensions. In this essay, Lahti argues that a transnational method can counter these imbalances in trauma theory and in studies of US war fiction. She engages Tim O'Brien's highly influential The Things They Carried from a transnational perspective by interrogating the text's figuring of the survivor author and focusing on critically neglected scenes of interaction between the American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians. In order to discern the way these scenes reveal the text's own struggle with its national US frame, she elaborates a methodology of close reading characters' bodily gestures to foreground the way that fiction offers a glimpse into war as a relational event, always involving two or more participants. In the case of The Things They Carried, this approach brings into view a heretofore unnoticed pattern of mimicry between the American characters and Vietnamese characters that reshapes our scholarly understanding of the text's representation of war trauma.

Politics in the Postnational Constellation. An Approach to Habermas’s Conception of the State

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Juan Carlos Velasco

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The steady loss of sovereign power of the national states and the correlative transition to a post-national constellation are, according to Habermas, among the major trends that characterize the current state of affairs in the world in political terms. Against this geopolitical background in which clear guidelines remain to be defined, Habermas outlines a possible political response with a democratic design: he suggests to recover the cosmopolitan project of Kant and to expedite the constitutionalization of the international sphere. One of the biggest challenges in this regard consists in reconciling the need for global governance of common affairs of humanity with demands for democratic participation. The configuration of a post-westphalian democratic practice in accordance with a multi-level structure of international relations could be a plausible solution.

MARGARET ATWOOD'S NON-FICTION ABOUT FICTION: PAYBACK

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Igor Maver

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Margaret Atwood's provocative recent book of non-fiction contains many literary references, which help to effectively highlight her points about such a topical matter as debt, debt as a philosophical, politico-economic, religious, and historical issue over the centuries. In the central chapters of the book she looks at the Protestant Reformation and the introduction of interest on loans and in this light analyzes the novels by Dickens, Irving, Thackeray and G. Eliot. Her final statement in the book is, however, about the ecological debt we all have to pay to Earth in order to ensure our existence.

Stranger than fiction: Fan identity in cosplay

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Nicolle Lamerichs

2011-09-01

Full Text Available Academic accounts of fan cultures usually focus on creative practices such as fan fiction, fan videos, and fan art. Through these practices, fans, as an active audience, closely interpret existing texts and rework them with texts of their own. A practice scarcely examined is cosplay ("costume play", in which fans produce their own costumes inspired by fictional characters. Cosplay is a form of appropriation that transforms and actualizes an existing story in close connection to the fan community and the fan's own identity. I provide analytical insights into this fan practice, focusing on how it influences the subject. Cosplay is understood as a performative activity and analyzed through Judith Butler's concept of performativity. I specifically focus on boundaries between the body and dress, and on those between reality and fiction. I aim to show that cosplay emphasizes the personal enactment of a narrative, thereby offering new perspectives on fan identity.

L Ron Hubbard's science fiction quest against psychiatry.

Science.gov (United States)

Hirshbein, Laura

2016-12-01

Layfayette Ronald Hubbard (1911-1986) was a colourful and prolific American writer of science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s. During the time between his two decades of productivity and his return to science fiction in 1980, Hubbard founded the Church of Scientology. In addition to its controversial status as a religion and its troubling pattern of intimidation and litigation directed towards its foes, Scientology is well known as an organised opponent to psychiatry. This paper looks at Hubbard's science fiction work to help understand the evolution of Scientology's antipsychiatry stance, as well as the alternative to psychiatry offered by Hubbard. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

Science fiction as a culture of global innovation

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Thomas MICHAUD

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Science fiction participates to the creation of a global culture of innovation. It is diffused in most of the developed countries to promote technical innovation and has motivated a lot of actors of capitalism to imitate the utopian technologies represented in these very popular movies and novels. The stake of this article is to define the strategic habitus in a cultural environment constituted of multiple centers of Research and Development (R&D organized in network. The management of science fiction is necessary to optimize innovation at a global level. After the step of the ideological filtering of science fiction, the construction of discursive philters permits to manage productive systems with common and normalized cultural considerations. The approaches of sensemaking, storytelling and “strategy as discourse” are used at the theoretical level.

When fiction is just as real as fact: No differences in reading behavior between stories believed to be based on true or fictional events

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hartung, F.C.; Withers, P.J.; Hagoort, P.; Willems, R.M.

2017-01-01

Experiments have shown that compared to fictional texts, readers read factual texts faster and have better memory for described situations. Reading fictional texts on the other hand seems to improve memory for exact wordings and expressions. Most of these studies used a 'newspaper' versus

SWEDISH CRIME FICTION AS SOCIALLY INVOLVED LITERATURE

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Monika Samsel-Chojnacka

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Swedish crime novel has been transforming for many years to become more socially involved. The ambition of many writers is not only to entertain the readers but also to participating in the social debate, criticizing the political and economical system, focusing on important issues such as violence against women, exploitation of working class by the privileged ruling class, the problems of a modern family and the situation of immigrants. Since the moment when in the mid 60’s two journalists Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö decided to use popular literature to spread social matters many other Swedish writers have decided to follow their way. Some of them are journalists – like Liza Marklund, Börge Hellström and Anders Roslund or Stieg Larsson. Their novels as well as the ones written by Henning Mannkel on Kurt Wallander have become crucial evidence of changes of Swedish society in the past twenty years. Modern Swedish crime fiction illustrates the population in the model fashion that is the reason why it can become one of the interests of the sociology of literature.

Dickens and Science Fiction: A Study of Artificial Intelligence in Great Expectations

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Pete Robert Orford

2010-04-01

Full Text Available Dickens didn't write science fiction - or did he? More to the point, why on earth wouldn't Dickens write science fiction? In an era when writers were experimenting more and more with the fusion of science and the unknown in their writing, the apparent absence of such a work by Dickens appears conspicuous. This article addresses this issue by exploring the confused beginnings of science fiction and goes on to present a detailed study of robotics in 'Great Expectations. 'It seeks out the resonances between Dickens's novel and early robot fiction of the nineteenth century, examining Estella's inhumanity and the way in which both she and Pip are 'made' by Miss Havisham and Magwitch. Ultimately, the paper aims to show that Dickens's writing does indeed have a place in the study of science fiction.

Public affairs plan

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

1994-09-01

The purpose of the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project Public Affairs Plan is to establish goals for the Fiscal Year 1995 UMTRA public affairs program and identify specific activities to be conducted during the year. It also describes the roles of various agencies involved in the conduct of the public affairs program and defines the functions of the Technical Assistance Contractor (TAC) Public Affairs Department. It integrates and replaces the Public Participation Plan (DOE/AL/62350-47D) and Public Information Plan (DOE/AL/623590-71). The plan describes the US Department of Energy`s (DOE) plans to keep stakeholders and other members of the public informed about project policies, plans, and activities, and provide opportunities for stakeholders and interested segments of the public to participate in project decision-making processes. The plan applies to the UMTRA Project Office; the DOE Albuquerque Operations Office, Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs (OIEA); the UMTRA TAC; the UMTRA Remedial Action Contractor (RAC); and other cooperating agencies.

Public affairs plan

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1994-09-01

The purpose of the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project Public Affairs Plan is to establish goals for the Fiscal Year 1995 UMTRA public affairs program and identify specific activities to be conducted during the year. It also describes the roles of various agencies involved in the conduct of the public affairs program and defines the functions of the Technical Assistance Contractor (TAC) Public Affairs Department. It integrates and replaces the Public Participation Plan (DOE/AL/62350-47D) and Public Information Plan (DOE/AL/623590-71). The plan describes the US Department of Energy's (DOE) plans to keep stakeholders and other members of the public informed about project policies, plans, and activities, and provide opportunities for stakeholders and interested segments of the public to participate in project decision-making processes. The plan applies to the UMTRA Project Office; the DOE Albuquerque Operations Office, Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs (OIEA); the UMTRA TAC; the UMTRA Remedial Action Contractor (RAC); and other cooperating agencies

Aesthetics of destruction in contemporary science fiction cinema

OpenAIRE

Warton, John Phillips

2015-01-01

Mass destruction imagery within the science fiction film genre is not a new cinematic development. However, a swell of destruction-centred films has emerged since the proliferation of digital technologies and computer-generated imagery that reflect concerns that extend beyond notions of spectacle. Through illusionistic realism techniques, the aesthetics of mass destruction imagery within science fiction cinema can be seen as appropriating the implied veracity of other film trad...

Textbook vs. Historical Fiction: Impact on Social Studies Students

Science.gov (United States)

Rider, Amanda

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of adding historical fiction novels as a supplement to the textbook in an eighth grade social studies course. This qualitative study focused on student interest and feedback as their social studies class was altered through the addition of historical fiction novels. The research questions were…

Fictions of Ambivalence